


The Captivity of Colonel John Sheppard

by SylvanWitch



Category: Stargate: Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-25
Updated: 2012-03-25
Packaged: 2017-11-02 12:58:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 80,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When an off-world mission turns into a long-term captivity, John Sheppard learns more than he'd ever imagined he'd want to know about bear hunting, surviving a plague, and his own emotional limits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Captivity of Colonel John Sheppard

Chapter One

There was nothing unusual about P2X-553 except that the landscape looked like it had been designed by Norman Rockwell for a particularly bucolic _Saturday Evening Post_ cover. _New England Woods in Winter_ , John thought. 

The evergreens under which they were walking drooped with snow like white icing, and every step they took brought an echo of their feet to their cold-reddened ears. At the verge of the forest, sound traveled outward and away from them, toward the rise on their right and the stargate beyond it. Beneath the trees to their left, sound was caught and deadened, muffled by the fall of ancient needles and the carpeting thickness of snow.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

_Good thing there aren’t any natives on this planet_ , John reflected. _They’d hear us for miles._

He didn’t have time to curse his own stupidity, for the jinx took effect more or less immediately.

He heard the whirr before the thump and had time to duck and dive for the wide bole of an evergreen, shouting a half-word of warning to the others as they did the same, Rodney cursing loudly and trying to pry his gloves off with his teeth so that he could unholster his sidearm.

John had the P-90 up and ready, but there was no one to aim at.

A single arrow still quivered at eye level on the opposite side of the tree behind which he’d taken cover.

“Ronon?” 

“Nothing.”

The benefit of Ronon’s reticence was his concurrent terseness. Somehow, the big man always knew what John was asking.

“Teyla?” he cajoled, trying to sound casual, like they got shot at with arrows every day.

Well, okay, it had happened three times before, but John hardly thought that was a habit so much as it might be a trend.

“I hear no one,” she said, voice low and tense but still beautiful, carrying clearly through the sharp air.

He didn’t bother asking Rodney, whose breathing alone was loud enough to prevent the physicist from hearing anything else.

John scanned the landscape around them, searching for any sign of their attacker.

_Attackers_ , John thought, spotting a plume of vaporized breath, nearly invisible against the background of snow, snaking into the air over the slight rise to the south of their position.

“Ronon.”

“Got it.”

“I see it, as well,” Teyla added.

“What?” hissed Rodney. “What do you see?”

Another whirr, the expected thump, and a yelp as Rodney cringed and flattened himself further against the tree.

“Shut up, Rodney,” John suggested through clenched teeth.

“Right,” he whispered, “Right.” 

“Any ideas, Teyla?” John asked. He always deferred to her in these situations because she usually had a better sense of native cultures in general and hostile natives in particular. He guessed that centuries of being hunted by the Wraith probably made a fairly significant impact on one’s genetic memory when it came to trusting strangers.

“I do not recognize the fletching,” Teyla observed, giving the offending arrow a careful once-over. “But that does not mean the archer is not of a people I may know.”

“They had to have come through the gate,” Rodney observed, giving John a sharp look. “There weren’t any life signs on this planet when we got here.” He was holding the life signs detector in one hand, squinting to make out the readings in the gloomy umbrage of his sheltering tree. 

“Oh, this is not good,” he continued, bringing the viewscreen within inches of his eyes.

“What?” If John sounded impatient, it was only because Rodney was usually right when he made that particular remark.

“There aren’t any life signs now. Which is impossible, of course. I mean, we should have life signs. We’re still alive.” He poked himself cautiously in the cheek. Apparently satisfied with the results of his field experiment, Rodney returned to examining the detector, smacking it hard on one side and then the other.

A third arrow struck the tree behind which Ronon was skulking. The big man had just taken a step forward as though he might slink to the next tree closer to John’s position.

They were spread out across a stretch of perhaps thirty yards. John was in the lead, closest to the gate and thus to the attackers, then Rodney, Teyla, and Ronon. Eyeing the telltale plumes of breath from their attackers, John noticed something ominous.

“They’re flanking us,” he warned, not caring that the enemy might hear. “Get ready!”

A hail of arrows followed his warning, and all John could do was huddle in on himself, back against the tree, gun against his chest, eyes on the woods beyond him. Could he make it to the next tree back? Deeper into the forest, there were more obstructions. If he could get far enough in, he might be safe. 

He glanced to his left in time to see an arrow slide by Rodney, who had apparently had the same idea. The fletching brushed his coat with a rasping noise and he startled, losing his footing. John dove toward him, intending to help him to the safety of the deeper woods, but even as he left the relative safety of his own wide trunk, he knew he’d be too late. Another bolt was spiraling toward the physicist, its deadly trajectory already calculated, the probabilities already set.

“Rodney!” he shouted, pushing himself anyway, knowing it wasn’t enough.

The arrow struck Rodney high on his left shoulder, glancing off the flak vest but also propelling him forward and headlong into the next tree back, which he struck with some force. He fell like sawn timber and did not move.

“Rodney!” John called again, seeing Teyla as she crawled behind a downed tree toward Rodney’s exposed position.

He threw himself behind the very tree that had been Rodney’s shelter. The cold air seared his lungs as he sucked in a deep breath.

“Ronon, you got ‘em?”

“No,” the big man barked, rolling across an open space and into the lee of another forest giant.

“You?”

“No,” John answered, sparing a glance at Rodney, whom Teyla had by now reached. The scientist was moaning lowly and trying to rise. 

“Rodney, stay down,” John ordered, risking a look from around the tree trunk at the direction from which their attackers were shooting.

Nothing. The arrows had stopped as suddenly as they had begun, and in the silence that ensued, John could hear the individual breaths of each of his teammates.

Ignoring the itchy feeling at the back of his neck, John very deliberately placed his bulk between the downed scientist and the rise behind him, crouching next to the struggling man as he tried to get to his knees and then his feet. It was a study in inelegance, but Rodney eventually managed it.

“You okay?” John asked, splaying his hand out at the small of Rodney’s back as much to steady the swaying man as to move him deeper into the cover of the big trees.

A few unsteady steps evened out to a regular, though slow, walk. Soon enough, there were trees between themselves and their unseen attackers, and John signaled that they should stop. Rodney sank against a tree with a loud sigh, and John gave him a long look, half irritated at the noise, half worried at its import.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Rodney?”

“I didn’t answer you the first time,” Rodney noted, raising a shaking hand to his forehead. “Of course I’m not okay. I was just struck with an arrow and then concussed on a pine tree. And I have sap in my hair,” he added, pulling his hand away from his head with a grimace of disgust.

Teyla stepped closer, peering up at the already visible swell of what would soon be a really impressive egg on Rodney’s forehead. “You did not break the skin,” she said calmly, ignoring Rodney’s chuff of discontent. “I believe the damage is not permanent.”

“Oh, well, thank you very much Teyla Nightingale. Be sure to have Carson add your observations to my medical chart…when I’m in a coma!”

“Rodney,” John warned, keeping his voice low. 

Rodney gave him a look and then grimaced. “Right,” he said, much more quietly. “Shutting up now.”

“I’m going to see if I can’t get a look at our friendly natives,” John said. “Ronon, Teyla, you stay here unless the shooting starts again, in which case, head back the way we came. We’ll rendezvous at that stream with the fallen log. You know the one?” John looked at Ronon, who nodded in the affirmative.

“What do we do if they attack us?” Ronon asked, giving John a hard look.

“Shoot them,” John said simply, shifting the P-90 to prevent it from scraping as he moved from tree to tree.

“Why didn’t we do that before?” Rodney asked, indignation making him loud again.

“No targets,” Ronon said.

“And we do not know if they may be friends who are simply confused about our presence here,” Teyla added. “We could be infringing on their hunting territory or violating a sacred law.”

“What about the fact that they’re infringing on my territory by shooting me with an arrow?” Rodney argued, eyes sharp with anger.

“We’re not shooting what we can’t see,” John explained through gritted teeth, patience giving way to the pounding headache that was starting to make itself known.

“If you see them, and they’re hostile, shoot them,” he added to Ronon and Teyla, who both nodded grimly. “If they make like Casper on you, hide and try to avoid getting shot.”

Both of them gave John quizzical looks, Ronon’s suggesting that maybe John had taken an arrow to the head and none of them had noticed it yet.

“Right, Sheppard, pick the earth allusion to confuse the aliens,” Rodney sneered. “He means that if the enemy never shows himself, we should hide until he gets back,” he translated, giving John a superior little smile.

John said nothing, though he was inwardly relieved to hear that Rodney was returning to normal, and then he turned toward the deeper forest, planning to work his way around the rise in a wide arc, hoping to come up beside the enemy, close enough, at least, to see them. 

Soon, it was only his breath and the steady crunch of his feet keeping him company. He hoped that the woods deadened the sound of his progress well enough, or there was liable to be a welcoming committee there to greet him when he finally made it to a decent vantage point.

He ran into the first snag in his plan when he came to a section of swampy lowland that was only thinly veiled in ice. One tentative step onto the glassy surface convinced him that there was no quiet way to traverse the marsh, even if it weren’t treacherous to try.

John paused to look skyward, evaluating how much light he might have left, but the bright grey clouds told him nothing. The marsh seemed to stretch for miles, sparse grasses barely moving in the stillness of the winter’s day. He watched idly as a large bird flew overhead, listening to its big wings beat the air in its flight. He envied it the freedom, which was one thing he’d always loved about flying.

This hiking crap was for Marines.

Shrugging off a shiver of sudden and inexplicable apprehension, John turned away from the marsh and started to double-back on his trail, hoping to find a way through the snarled tangle of undergrowth that had kept him from making a southern jog before now.

He thought there might have been a game trail somewhere back there.

_Should have let Ronon do this_ , he thought and not for the first time. 

Finding the slender, twisted trail was challenge enough. Using it to make headway was nearly impossible. Whatever animals had beaten the path couldn’t have been very tall, and in places, John had to crawl on all fours, feeling thorny tentacles grabbing at his hair, hooking in his jacket, and catching on his pants.

He couldn’t tell how much noise he was making, for all he could hear was his own labored breath and the shush-shush of his clothing as it rubbed against and was caught on the enveloping brambles.

Finally, the trail broke free of the worst of the undergrowth, ending at a wide clearing in the trees. In the center of the clearing was an irregularly shaped boulder, maybe twelve feet long and at its highest point only slightly taller than John. 

Repositioning his gun over his shoulder, John scrambled to the top and surveyed the surrounding woodland. Nothing seemed especially telling. For example, there were no arrows with the helpful words “This way to the bad guys” painted on them in a friendly scrawl.

If he were being completely honest with himself, John might have admitted at this point that he was a little lost. On his hands and knees fighting off the foliage, he hadn’t paid much attention to the direction in which the path had taken him, and now he wasn’t entirely clear on where he was in relation to his team’s last known position. Thankfully, the same degree of self-delusion that allowed John to fly into certain-death situations was also sustaining him in that moment, and he pretended that he knew exactly where he was.

_I’m standing on a large rock in a woodsy clearing_ , he thought, jumping down and moving—with a confidence he did not feel—toward what he thought might be the general location of the stargate. The attackers had been between his team and the ‘gate, so it stood to reason that if he moved toward the ‘gate, he should come across some sign of their mystery assailants.

If he wasn’t eaten by the Pegasus equivalent of a bear first. 

John made a face and stepped carefully around the pile of scat in the middle of the game trail he was using. This path had apparently been created by a much larger animal, a fact that did nothing to make John feel better. Sure, he could walk upright, but if the headroom was the tradeoff for an animal at least as tall as he was, John thought he could stand some more crawling.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to worry about that for much longer because just as he was beginning to seriously doubt the wisdom of using the trail, he thought he heard the low murmur of voices ahead.

The path had been rising gradually but steadily, and John thought he might be cresting the very hill from which the attackers must have been firing on the team. He moved off of the trail, walking more slowly and with some caution, watching his feet and trying to step carefully over deadfall. 

As he moved closer to the apparent source of the sounds, it became obvious that there was a group of men, perhaps a dozen, standing in a loose circle around some object that John couldn’t see. There seemed to be some disagreement, for one man was gesturing emphatically toward the unseen thing and then pointing over his shoulder, toward the other side of the hill and John’s waiting team beyond.

John crept closer, taking care to keep the trunk of a tree always between himself and the party he was stalking.

A second man, taller than the first by a full head, barked out a series of words that made John strain to hear them. It was like the murmur of voices through a thin wall; he could hear the intonation, even surmise the emotions behind the words, but he could not tell what the tall man was saying.

He was thirty feet away when the murmur of voices ceased altogether and the entire party, to a man, turned to look directly at John’s position.

He flattened himself behind the nearest tree, breathing hard and clutching his P-90. He was getting a little tired of evergreens.

_Shit_ , he thought, freezing in place. _What had alerted them?_

He supposed it didn’t matter now; the damage was done. He hadn’t exactly been dressed for recon, and in the brown and white landscape of deciduous winter woods, the black flak vest and uniform stood out. There was no way that he could evade them if he ran now.

Keeping the tree firmly at his back, John peered around its sheltering comfort to see ten—no, eleven—pairs of brown eyes focused on him.

A voice called out in a tone that he knew well, though the words were foreign. 

_Come out with your hands up_ , John decided, was a universal command that needed no real translation.

He took some time to consider his options and his opponents. 

They were standing closer together now, shoulder to shoulder, six in front and five behind. Those in the fore were holding their bows loosely in their hands, but John wasn’t fooled by their apparently casual stance. He knew warriors when he saw them.

They were dressed almost identically: tanned hide leggings to their ankles, soft leather boots apparent beneath them, shirts made of a softer material, not hide but something woven, he thought. The pattern of the weave and colors of the thread provided a kind of camouflage in the relative bareness of the woods, and he had to admire its efficiency. If he hadn’t known they were there, they might have blended into the background, so still were they all.

The tall one, he who had raised his voice to the others and who had commanded John to come out, carried no bow and wore no insignia of leadership or power, but it was obvious even from his stance that he was someone important. He stood slightly ahead of the others in the group, his eyes fixed on John’s face, hands at his sides, palms open, not in a gesture of placation but in the posture of someone who was sure how things would turn out.

He repeated the words, his tone perhaps more impatient than commanding now, and the words the tall man used niggled at John, teasing his memory—so familiar but so foreign, the way a word in Chinese, for example, can sound like a word in everyday English that means something entirely else.

John hesitated, wondering what his chances were of resisting.

A familiar whirr and thump explained it for him clearly.

Letting his gun drop, John moved away from the safety of the tree, his hands up, palms facing the aliens in the kind of calming gesture one might use on hysterical children and crazy people.

The leader barked something else, and two of the archers broke rank, flanking John with raised bows.

“Hey,” he said, using the kind of soothing tone that he reserved for upset girlfriends and angry dogs. “Take it easy. I’m a friend—a peaceful explorer. I don’t want any trouble.”

John tried to exude trustworthy harmlessness, an attempt that was clearly limited in scope as the first archer grabbed his gunstrap and pulled the P-90 away from John. The second made quick work of his sidearm in its snug thigh holster and, after a barked command from the tall man, also grabbed the knife at John’s waist.

_Damn it_ , John thought, hoping that they wouldn’t figure out the other places he had secreted a knife. Training with Ronon had yielded a number of rewards, John thought, not the least of which was Knife-Hiding 101. He made a note to thank Ronon if he managed to survive his current crisis.

“You don’t have to be afraid of my friends and me. We’re just here to look around. In fact, you caught us on our way back to the stargate. If you let us go, we’ll be out of your hair in no time.”

Considering the long braids that each man wore down his back, John though the metaphor particularly apt.

“Do you speak English?”

Silence.

The archer with his P-90 used the muzzle of the gun to push John forward, toward the waiting group.

“Take it easy with that,” John said, suddenly worried that he might end up getting shot with his own weapon accidentally. He didn’t think he’d had the safety on, but he couldn’t remember. It was second nature to release the safety in situations just like this one.

If the gun went off, he was so screwed.

Of course, he was probably screwed anyway, he thought, considering the tall chief into whose immediate presence he was propelled with a great deal of force that left no room for interpretation.

Drawing himself up, John thanked Ronon silently again for getting him used to looking up—and up—at big guys. He squared his shoulders and summoned the easy affability of an afternoon playing pick-up ball in the gym.

“Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, United States Air Force,” he said, offering his hand. 

The man gave him a long look, measuring him from boots to hair and then back again, coming to rest finally on the blank spot on John’s sleeve where an insignia was supposed to be. John dropped his hand.

The eyes moved back to his, and the man said something and gestured with his chin in the direction of the archer to John’s right, the one holding his P-90.

“That?” John hazarded. “That’s just for…hunting. You know, in case we run into the, uh…giant bears. And...” He hesitated, reaching out carefully toward the archer wielding his gun. “You need to make sure the safety is on.” 

The other archer grabbed him from behind, pulling him roughly backward and off-balance, throwing him easily to the ground at the tall man’s feet.

John pushed himself into a sitting position and raised his hands in front of his face. “Okay, okay, you don’t have to get rough. I just don’t want anyone getting killed out of ignorance.”

He supposed that probably sounded patronizing, but then again, these guys had no idea what he was saying.

The chief gave a sharp command and the archer put the gun down and stepped away from it as though it might turn into a snake and devour him.

_Or_ , John thought, _they understand every word I’m saying and just want to screw around with me._

“Look,” he tried again. “My friends and I were just leaving, really. Let me go, and I’ll take the scary fire stick with me through the gate. We’ll go and never come back.”

A strange light came into the chief’s eyes, and he turned toward the other men, who until that point had stood silent witness to all that had transpired.

He said something low and light, and everyone laughed. John figured it was at his expense.

“Okay, laughter is good,” he muttered, taking the opportunity their levity provided to examine his immediate surroundings.

They were just below the crest of the rise on the side opposite his team’s last position; the treeline sloped away from them down a steep incline and off into a distance, spreading into a carpet of winter-bare deciduous trees marked here and there with stands of evergreens for as far as his eyes could see. 

From this vantage point, he could tell that the light was fast waning and that it would soon be dark. The ground was cold beneath him, the dusting of snow melting and penetrating through his pants. He shifted up onto his knees.

Twenty-two eyes pinned him in place.

He raised his hands again and then, disgusted with the gesture and its obvious futility, threw them up in a way that Rodney would have been proud of.

“Look,” he said a second time. “I’m sure this is all just a big misunderstanding. We didn’t mean to invade your territory or violate your sacred hunting grounds or anything. We were just exploring, looking for signs of life, civilizations, trading partners. We’d be glad to leave.”

Another terse command just on the edge of John’s memory, and the archers were pulling him up, one to either side, and the whole party was moving away toward the edge of the incline, disappearing one by one down a path invisible from John’s position.

He struggled now, throwing his weight from side to side, kicking, dragging his captors down, because he sensed in the primitive part of him that they were taking him away—away from his team, from his friends, from the gate and its promise of safety and home. 

The archer on his right lost his grip, and John wrenched himself away from the other, scrambled for an agonizing moment to get his footing on the slippery slope, and then plunged upward and away, gaining one yard and then two, running headlong and blind, nothing but snow and the slushy evidence of their passage to guide him.

The slick footing made it hard to gain speed, and the incline made it harder, gravity pulling him back toward his captors, who were strangely silent in their pursuit.

He didn’t want to look back into the eye of a chasing arrow, didn’t want to see how close his captors might be to recapturing him.

He hit the rise running full out, threw himself toward the other side, trying to make himself less of a target and still cover ground. He hoped there wasn’t much of a fall because he wasn’t sure he could stop himself, and as the ground sloped away again, this time down toward the woods where his team waited, he wondered if he was going to make it after all.

Lungs burning as he sucked in the cold air, breath labored and heavy in his ears, John slowed to keep from falling, careened into a tree, pushed himself off, slammed into another, and so on, like a demented game of pinball in which the odds were all on the tilt.

A searing pain struck him and he stumbled, went down and rolled right into the wide bole of a tree. He heard a crack as his back struck, and he was robbed of breath, spots shattering his sight into prisms as he struggled. 

His neck was on fire, and he touched it instinctively, trying to stop the flow of blood that coated his hand as it came away.

Darkness grew on the edge of his vision, filling in the margin of his sight, and before he could find breath to shout, they were on him and he was lost.

 

Chapter Two

 

John didn’t know how long he was unconscious, except that it was full dark when he came to. 

The familiar whoosh-thump of the ‘gate brought him round, and he shouted—or thought he did—hoping to alert his team. Nothing came out but a feeble wheeze, and he coughed and then wished he hadn’t. His neck was on fire and he moaned, which brought a nudge to his ribs that raised an answering fire in his chest.

He rolled to one side and vomited into the snow. Every heave was agony, a band of knives tightening around his torso.

Finally spent, he tried to glare at the men whose feet ringed him, but he suspected that vomit-induced tearing didn’t make for a manly show of intimidation. He settled instead for taking shallow sips of air and running an internal inventory of his bones.

He didn’t think anything was broken, but his ribs felt like they’d gone three rounds with a Mack truck—or a big fucking tree. He groaned as his memory returned and got for his trouble another nudge.

“Knock it off,” he rasped, trying to gather enough strength to climb to his hands and knees.

Rough hands pulled him upward and he yelped as the motion brought with it a sharper pain than before.

_Okay, so there is something broken_ , he decided, gritting his teeth against the grating he could feel when he breathed. It felt like he’d inhaled metal shavings, and he thought he might want to vomit again, except he suspected it might kill him.

The chief said something and John glanced up from where he’d been contemplating the sorry state of his boots. Blood had seeped into the laces along the way, turning the black to a rusty brown, and one toe was caked with mud. He realized he was having trouble focusing. 

“What?” He was trying for peevish but fell short at tired and gave up trying to communicate, deciding then and there that if there was something they really wanted to know they could draw him a fucking picture.

Repeating himself, the chief pointed to something behind John, and the colonel figured he’d better make the effort at turning around. The archers manhandled him in a circle and he bit back a stream of invective at the grinding pain their roughness brought.

Below him, in the wide bowl of a brown-grassed valley lit now by early stars and a fat yellow moon, the stargate shimmered and teased. Through it, he watched Rodney and then Ronon and finally Teyla go, the MALP following behind like a docile pet. Then the ‘gate winked out like an eye closing, and John couldn’t help but shiver, feeling suddenly alone, despite his dubious company.

He pulled his elbow from the pinching grip of the archer to his right, expecting to pay for his efforts with more pain.

Instead, the chief spoke again, and the second archer released him, as well.

It couldn’t have been more obvious had the man been speaking plain English: John had nowhere to go.

Even as John turned his gaze again to the gate, a slender figure trotted out to the DHD, removed a panel from below the wide dial, and withdrew something that glinted in the moonlight. John couldn’t tell where the runner had put it, but as swiftly as he’d come onto the scene he was gone, and if it weren’t for the murmur of approbation from the men around him, he might have believed it was all a hallucination.

A hand at his shoulder brought his eyes up to the chief’s. The big man was looking down at him, steadying him with the hand at his shoulder and keen brown eyes that showed now a kind of compassion, John thought. The hand moved to his neck and he jerked away. The chief persisted, saying something softly, and John shook his head against the heat he felt where the chief’s hand lay against his neck wound.

“Don’t,” he said. “You’ll make it bleed again.”

But the chief continued the steady pressure, and John felt some relief, like a balm had been laid over the wound. 

He gave the chief a longer look, tried his best to smirk, and said, “I usually don’t neck on the first date.”

That he was punning at all was proof of how seriously he was hurting. Healing touch or not, the guy wasn’t doing much for John’s aching ribs and his empty stomach roiled ominously in response to the waves of pain still following in the wake of each breath.

The hand moved away at last and John took a careful breath. Without warning, the chief turned abruptly away and started again for the path from which John had escaped earlier. Ahead, he could see heads disappearing down the slope, and he knew that the rest of the party was waiting for them below. 

Resigning himself to a long wait, John thought gratefully of the subcutaneous locater, sparing a glance up from his footing to stare at the stars, wondering if one of them was even now the Daedalus tracking his position.

Hope firmly between his teeth, John set out down the narrow path that hugged the edge of the hill, keeping his eyes on the feet of the man before him and trying not to pant as the pain passed through him with each jogging step.

When they reached the bottom of the hill, the party stopped to pull a broad tarp away from a pile of packs that were neatly arranged in the lee of the exposed rock of the hillside. John made the effort to stoop and touch the tarp, running it between his hands and turning the edge over to examine its underside. It was light, but from the way the evening damp was beaded along its outer surface, he knew it must be waterproof. Too, it was smooth, like silk, but sturdy. 

None of those qualities together bested the astonishing color of the tarp: it was any color and no color, blending so perfectly with the leaf-strewn ground and lichen-spotted rockface that if he hadn’t seen them move it, John would never have known it was there.

The chief said something and John felt a nudge against his foot. Looking up, he saw the chief studying him, his expression masked. Another nudge, and John stood, stepping away from the tarp as three of the party folded it and stowed it beneath a rock. Obviously, this was a place they used with some regularity.  
Another word from the chief, and they shouldered their packs. One of the men threw John a light hide satchel, and the sudden movement of catching it made him grunt and stagger back a half-step. He caught himself, grinding his teeth to keep his face clear of the pain radiating outward from his right side. No sense giving them another advantage.

The chief moved toward him, talking all the while in a low voice, which John supposed was meant to soothe him. Instead, it only made him angry, filled him with the frustration of not understanding. For as much time as he’d already spent in the Pegasus galaxy being confused, surprised, or flat out wrong about things, you’d think he’d have gotten used to it.

Or maybe it was just that he was tired and cold and hurting, and he really didn’t feel like a march, all of which reminded him a bit too closely of his life in the Academy.

So he slipped his arm through the satchel’s broad strap and brought it over his head, across his chest to favor the side of his body that wasn’t broken, and then he stepped forward into line with the others.

The chief halted, and John could have sworn he smirked, before turning around and taking the lead. 

And so they walked, strung out in a line, twelve men under the cold moon. Their breath ghosted out in thin streams against the clear sky, and the only sounds were John’s—his boots loud against the ground, breath loud against his lungs. He cleared his throat, snorted away the runny nose that always plagued him in cold weather, and tried to concentrate on naming every actress he’d ever seen in a film, starting with just the ones he’d watched in the theatre and then moving on to rentals.

He was trying to remember the name of the woman who’d played Kevin Costner’s wife in Field of Dreams when a hand on his shoulder stopped him in place.

When a cursory scan of the surrounding area gave him nothing, he said, “What?”

The grim-faced native shoved John hard toward a downed tree, and John understood that he was supposed to sit, which he did gratefully, though he tried not to show the fatigue that had been making him stumble more often over the past hour or so.

Larry, as John had dubbed him, if only internally—he’d tried to name his captors after the twelve Apostles but kind of got lost after James, so he’d had to fall back on the classics—crouched in front of John and began rummaging around in the satchel he’d been given to carry, soon withdrawing a pair of the soft leather boots that the whole native party wore.

He gestured unmistakably with them, indicating John should put them on.

“I don’t think so,” John said, smile brittle. “I’ll keep my standard-issue boots, thank you very much. Those don’t look very practical,” he added. “Thanks anyway.”

Larry cuffed him across the head and threw the boots in his lap.

John’s ear stung, and he shook his head to clear the ringing, his smile shifting to something feral and ugly. 

“I said no,” he gritted out between his teeth, tossing the boots back at Larry and considering the wisdom of going for one of the two hidden knives his captors hadn’t found to confiscate.

The native raised his hand again, but a command from the chief stilled him and he dropped his arm and backed away.

John tried to slow his heart rate, glad that he’d won this round without resorting to violence. He’d learned a long time ago that he couldn’t control the big things—where he was stationed, what he was ordered to do, how the Wraith ravaged the planets in his galaxy. But the small things mattered, he knew, and as he looked down at his stained and scuffed boots, he was grateful for them.

Another word from the chief, and Moe and Curly had John pinned to the log while Larry untied his boots and removed them, throwing them with graceful athleticism far into the dark woods off the path to the left.

The twin thumps sounded like doors closing at a distance, and John had to draw in a breath, feel the burn in his ribcage to focus on the here and now.

They were just boots. They didn’t matter at all. 

He put on the soft hide boots, which had obviously been well-worn by their previous owner, and stood unsteadily, exhaustion overcoming his resolve to bear up. He swayed in place, time holding until he could gain his balance, and then stood looking into the middle distance as though he were in the process of resisting interrogation instead of merely trying to stay on his feet.

The chief—the only one that John hadn’t found a suitable name for—asked him something, and John figured he knew what it was.

“Great. Just great.” Stepping away from Moe and Curly, who had released him when he’d complied with their “ultimatum,” he took a few tentative steps and was relieved to find that the boots fit, at any rate.

The chief nodded decisively and gestured that they should keep moving, which John did only with great reluctance. 

There had been a lot of times when John had been at the very edge of his endurance. Usually, however, something would happen—an explosion, for example, or a blood-curdling scream—that jacked adrenaline into him like he was mainlining speed. The tedious left-right-left of their brisk march through the apparently never-ending woods sapped John of his strength and made him whine inwardly.

He’d never liked marching. He’d joined the Air Force to fly—to cover long distances as quickly as possible. He wasn’t lazy, but he’d never understood the obvious masochism of the Marines, who seemed to genuinely enjoy hiking for miles in sweltering heat while burdened like pack animals. And the army guys…don’t even get him started.

When he realized he was starting to sound a lot like Rodney, John switched his line of thought, considering instead the direction in which they were hiking and trying to calculate how much ground they’d crossed. 

His captors had let him keep his watch, so he glanced at it as surreptitiously as he could, marking the time. Scanning ahead for a reasonable landmark, John spotted a widowmaker well ahead, the big tree caught up in its nearest brother, threatening to bring them both down in the next big wind. He estimated the distance and trudged on, feeling a little thrill when he passed the marker and looked once again at his watch. 

In this way, he was able to calculate that they’d traveled approximately twelve miles in three hours. He wasn’t sure how much good that knowledge would do him, but at least he was keeping himself occupied. Truth was, the teams had long ago given up on trusting the compasses in their wristwatches after the third team in a row had gotten hopelessly lost on what was supposed to be a routine re-con mission. Seems the poles of different planets had different effects on “magnetic North.”

Of course, Rodney had gloated with a cloud of “I told you so’s” for weeks after that.

So John had no real idea of what direction they were traveling, but he had noticed a slight incline in the trail for the past hour. They weren’t climbing a mountain but instead coming up out of what must be a broad, flat valley, maybe the remainder of an inland sea. John considered the rusty state of his topographical lessons. It was so much easier to tell these things from the air.

Still, he was pretty sure that they had been in a lowland—the marsh he’d had to avoid was a good indication. And the hill that they’d been on could have been an escarpment left from some ancient glacial upheaval…assuming this planet had glaciers, of course.

All of this was very interesting, John reflected, but it didn’t work for long to distract him from the one thought that kept circling and cycling through his brain, which was that the Daedelus should have found him by now if it was going to.

Oh, sure, they could be busy doing something else, like fighting off a wraith incursion, for example. And this being the Pegasus galaxy, John didn’t dismiss even the outlandish idea that the ship had gotten caught in a giant space net or was currently trapped in an eddy in the space-time continuum. He amused himself for a good ten minutes recycling old Star Trek story lines, in his version of which Caldwell had neither Picard’s intelligent good judgment nor Kirk’s righteous passion. 

But eventually, his mind came back around to the main—and persistent—point, which was that he hadn’t been rescued yet. 

The longer it took to rescue him, John knew, the less likely that rescue was to be.

_Something has gone wrong_ , John thought. _What else is new?_

He thought about leaving a sign of his passing for Ronon to find but considered it a little late in the game to make like Hansel. Besides, they’d search by jumper, right, and use life signs detectors. 

Which, the last time John had checked, weren’t working according to Rodney’s very specific and exacting standards. An image of the physicist pounding the handheld Ancient device like it was a juke box and he was the Fonz flitted through John’s very tired brain.

Hope slipped a little, but he bit it back, swallowing hard and trying to consider all of the possibilities.

He was on this planet. He hadn’t gone anywhere, the team had. They knew he was still there; obviously, he hadn’t left a bloodied corpse behind to throw them off the track and number him among the dead. They’d look. Rodney would get the LSD to work or figure out some other brilliant, eleventh-hour solution to the problem of John’s disappearance, and then he’d be rescued. It was simple.

John had been contemplating his destiny while staring at the ground; some part of him had concentrated only on staying upright and moving forward. So it was with some surprise that he realized the sky was lightening to the—he considered what he knew of the planet’s rotation and the placement of the sun in this solar system. 

Abandoning that notion when it became apparent just how deeply ignorant he was of his current situation, he decided, instead, to arbitrarily assign directions. _The sun was rising over there, so it must be East,_ he said to himself. Himself kindly concurred. 

Until he learned his true circumstances, John decided that he was going to pretend he was on a camping trip in the Adirondacks. When he was a kid, his dad had been stationed at Griffiss in Rome, New York, for awhile, and a couple of weekends he and his dad had driven up to the High Peaks region, hiked out to a pristine lake, and camped and fished, cooking their catch over an open fire and spending a lot of time being really quiet. 

As though the memory evoked a response from nature, a high and lonely cry broke the pre-dawn stillness, and John found himself stopping to listen. It sounded uncannily like a loon, and a wave of longing washed over him so suddenly that he felt it all the way down to his knees.

A hand between his shoulder blades pushed him forward and he cursed under his breath, the pressure having shifted his ribs and made his injury throb.

A word from the chief brought everyone to a halt, and then they were all dropping to the ground, some leaning against trees, others sitting with their legs crossed, each rummaging through their bags and pulling out various unidentifiable foodstuffs. John followed suit, finding a suitable stump, and waited for some sign that he, too, would be allowed to eat.

The chief, who had selected a spot of ground against a rock, said something to John and gestured toward the satchel he was carrying. John took that as a sign that he could eat whatever he could find, so he began his search, too fatigued to really feel the hunger he should be having but knowing that he had to try to eat, if only to give himself strength for the next leg of the journey.

He found a lump of something wrapped in a scrap of coarse brown material and then something else that might be a fruit. Its skin was shriveled and its flesh hard, but an experimental bite proved that it tasted something like a pear, and he ate it carefully, wondering—certainly not for the first time since he’d come to Pegasus—if this was the time he’d discover an unknown food allergy. Unwrapping the lump, he discovered a piece of. . .something. Sniffing it, he could detect no distinctive scent except, perhaps, the faint memory of smoke and fire. He tried to tear a bit off with his fingers, but it was too tough.

A bark of laughter brought his head up and he saw the whole of the party watching him with varying degrees of amusement. 

The chief, in an exaggerated gesture clearly meant to imply that John was slow, raised his own brown lump to his mouth, using his front molars to tear a bit of it away from the main.

John followed suit and found his mouth filled with saliva as the heavily-salted, smoked meat took its toll on his palate.

John had been military for a long, long time and had thought that he could stomach anything. But he was pretty sure that this…whatever it was—jerky?—might kill him.

He spit it out onto the ground and wondered about water. 

A harsh word from the chief had Larry up and snatching the rest of the meat from John. A quick cuff to his head told him he’d made another social blunder. He supposed that his captors might not have a lot to eat; it was winter, after all, and he guessed that they might be hunter/gatherers. The lack of bread certainly suggested that they didn’t do much by way of growing and harvesting, although he could be wrong.

Then again, they had woven stuffs, which usually suggested a society far more advanced than simple hunter/gatherers, if he was remembering right what he’d learned in Western Civ class all those years ago. 

Whatever the case, he supposed it had been bad form to spit the food out with such obvious disgust, so he raised a hand in apology and said, “I’m sorry,” trying to sound sincere. The truth was, if they didn’t have anything for him besides the pear-like fruits, he might be in trouble, and he guessed that he could try the meat again if it came to that or starvation.

Meantime, he had to take a wicked piss. He stood carefully, hands out to show that he meant no sudden moves, and nodded toward the trees. 

“I’ve got to take a leak,” he tried, nodding once more to a spot just off the path and behind the wide trunk of a deciduous tree.

Larry and Curly stood up warily but didn’t move toward him.

“Piss?” John tried, grabbing his zipper in what he hoped was a meaningful—and not seductive—way.

Larry laughed once, sharp and quick, and sat back down, giving him a kind of dismissive half-wave, which John took to mean that he could go.

Apparently, it also meant that Curly was to go with him. Thankfully, years of group showers and missions in the field had stripped John of every ounce of embarrassment when it came to bodily functions.

Relieved—if not refreshed—he returned to the group and sat down again.

Moe handed him a bladder-shaped skin that John knew must hold water, and he took it gratefully, tipping the cold liquid into his mouth with relish. It tasted musty, like it had been in the skin long enough to gain a hint of the game from which the bladder had come, but he didn’t care. 

He handed it back after taking his fill and tried a smile, saying, “Thank you.”

Moe ignored him and handed the skin on to Curly.

That seemed to signal an end to their rest break, as his captors all rose and donned their packs once more. John stood up too suddenly, swayed, and fell back, the shock jarring his aching ribs and making him cough. He couldn’t catch his breath for the pain, which only made the cough worse and in turn strained his wounded ribs. Red-faced and gasping, he waved away Larry, who had tried to slap John on the back. Shaking his head violently, John tried to steady his breath, tried bringing it in through his nose and out through his mouth, but he couldn’t seem to catch a full breath and the effort made him dizzy.

He put his head down between his knees and practiced patience, knowing that if he hyperventilated he would pass out for sure. Finally, he sucked the air in gingerly through his nose and felt his lungs stretch, ribs creaking in protest. Letting out the breath, he tasted blood on his tongue, and it occurred to him for the first time that he might be more seriously hurt than he’d thought.

The coughing had brought tears to his eyes, and they streamed wetly down his face. He wiped them away and drew in another ragged breath, trying not to hear the rattle and wheeze as he did so. 

When you can’t breathe, the world becomes the instant between one desperate gasp and the next; it is narrowed to the thinnest stream of invisible life and all else falls away but the struggle. Coming back to himself finally, John took stock of his situation and found six of the men in a tight phalanx, two of them muttering and fingering the long knives that they wore at their belts and looking at him with obvious ill intent.

He searched for the chief, the only among them whom John believed had some investment in his survival besides John himself, and found the man looking deliberately away. The four other captors were crouching or leaning against a couple of trees, making an obvious show of neutrality.

Using one arm to wipe a thin stream of pink spittle from his lips, John pushed himself up with the other, locking his knees in place so that he wouldn’t sway too badly or fall down again. The four ignored him, but the chief turned his head to watch as John took a careful step forward, saying, “Hey, guys. I’m fine, see,” in what he hoped was a convincing—though breathy—tone.

Curly, who had obviously been appointed de facto leader of the mutinous bunch, gave him a baleful glare and said something that needed no real translation, his lip curled up in telegraphic disdain.

John walked a few more steps, despite the fact that exhaustion made his knees feel like noodles. Every breath drove needles of fire through his lungs, and he wanted a whole lot to hawk and spit, but he feared what they might think of the red glob he knew that would produce.

“Are we going, or what?” he asked, motioning toward the trail meaningfully. 

The chief swiveled his head to look at the six. Curly raised his voice and drew his knife, taking a decisive step toward John, who raised his right hand as though he were surrendering. In fact, it put that hand closer to one of his two remaining knives. He didn’t hold out much hope for his chances if it came to armed combat with Curly, but he wasn’t going to let the native sacrifice him for the sake of speed on the trail, either.

Curly took another step toward John, and John reached back further, raising his left hand as though intending to lace his fingers together behind his head. Instead, he figured it would give him a moment or two of defense, even if he did have to sacrifice his off arm to the first slash.

A sharp word from the chief halted Curly, who growled something distinctly unpleasant and tossed his head at John with a sneer.

A second word wiped the look from Curly’s face. John had seen that kind of blankness on the faces of GIs who’d been thoroughly dressed down by their superiors, and he felt a warm smugness fill his center, though he didn’t let it show on his face.

“No hard feelings?” he asked instead, his voice even. Curly, predictably, ignored him. The five others who had plotted John’s death broke rank, retrieved their packs, and waited for the chief’s signal to move out, which came only moments later, just after John had gingerly donned his own light satchel.

Chapter Three: The River Crossing

The morning sun was just topping the trees with golden light when they came to the river.

It was wide and wild, fast water running deep over big rocks that looked like they’d been tossed into the water at random, like a giant’s forgotten playthings. From downstream a steady roar bespoke a mighty cataract, and John was tempted to follow the river just to see what he might find at its end. He could see nothing much from the point at which they stood, for the river bent wide around a narrow strip of land that jutted out into the water, but above the trees he saw mist, which prismed into rainbows as the sun caught it. 

It was beautiful, and had he been feeling better, he might have appreciated it more. As it was, his hunger was getting the better of his coordination and the effort of breathing steadily without jarring his ribs was taking its toll. He wasn’t sure how much further he could walk, and he knew that Curly wouldn’t hesitate to kill him at the first signs of weakness, so he was doing his best to pretend to good health and good cheer.

John wasn’t sure he’d ever had a harder job.

He was thinking about mess hall coffee—which was always bitter enough to strip the paint off a tank—and the lumpy oatmeal they made out of some grain they’d traded for on P44-981. What he wouldn’t give for these simple pleasures.

Sighing, he reached into his satchel and extracted another shriveled pear-like fruit, biting into it and chewing slowly, trying to make it last. He had noticed that there weren’t any more of them in his pack, and he doubted he could get the horrid jerky back from Larry. He found himself wondering, perversely, if they’d arrive at a village any time soon.

At some unseen signal from the chief, the natives dropped their packs on the rocks around the river. One of them extracted a pot made of some indeterminate metal that made John reconsider his classification of their skills. Of course, they had knives, but John had sort of figured they’d traded for those. The pot seemed beaten, though, the handle soldered on snugly, and he thought that it must be a home job. 

The native—Fred, John called him, for he was wider in girth than the others and had a strange shock of dark hair atop his head—filled the pot while another—Barney, of course, for no other reason than he spent a lot of time around Fred—started a small fire in the sheltering lee of a big boulder. In minutes, they had the water boiling, and several of them were pulling tarnished metal cups and cloth-wrapped bundles of a dried herb from their packs.

John watched with interest as they brewed a hot drink. Sitting down on a handy rock, he rummaged in his pack and found a similar cup of his own, two dark spots worn into the handleless vessel by years of greasy fingers, he guessed. At the very bottom of a dark corner of the satchel, he found a small bundle of the dried herbs, and he followed his captors’ lead, throwing a handful into the bottom of the cup and then pouring proffered water over them.

The water turned a murky yellowish-brown. Sniffing it, John thought it smelled like August grass after it had been cut and dried—sweet and somehow golden. He let it brew and cool a little and then brought the cup cautiously to his lips, using the cloth from the herbs to keep from scalding his fingers. This earned him a derisive snort from two or three of the others; none of them needed the protection. He shrugged and gave them a sheepish grin.

The chief’s bark of laughter startled John, made him look at the tall man, who was sitting about six feet away. The chief had his long legs crossed in what John and his friends had called “Indian-style” as kids, before it had become somehow insulting to name it thus, and John envied the easy grace of the chief and his obvious imperviousness to the cold.

He turned his eyes away from the chief when he realized he was staring, fixing them instead on the cup in his hands.

He’d expected a weak tea and had hoped for nothing more than something warm in his empty stomach. But the brew was stronger than it smelled, faintly spicy, and it made his tongue and throat hot as it went down. The aftertaste was a little like nutmeg, and he decided that it wasn’t bad. Taking a larger swallow, he sighed, feeling the warmth as it hit his belly and spread throughout his limbs.

He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, feeling the weak sunlight on his face. There was no breeze, but the tumult of the water made him shiver somehow as he imagined the cold shock of it on his limbs. When he opened his eyes, two of his captors had disappeared, and he felt foolish for his moment of reverie now, wishing he’d been alert enough to sense their going.

He drained the cup of tea to its dregs and got up carefully, slowly, letting his body get used to movement once more. Squatting at a slow eddy where the river was caught behind a half-submerged boulder, John rinsed the cup and then shook away the excess water, stowing it in a scrap of hide he’d found in the satchel. He was still hungry, but the tea seemed to have in it some stimulant, for he was feeling far more awake and energetic than he had any right to expect.

He indicated his desire to go to the verge of the surrounding forest and relieve himself, and the negligence of the chief’s hand-wave suggested that John didn’t even require an escort this time. It made his stomach sink a little because it could only mean that the chief didn’t expect John to succeed in an escape.

Of course, John didn’t expect it, either. They were miles now from the gate, perhaps as many as twenty-five or thirty, and the continued failure of the Daedalus to rescue him suggested to John that he might be on his own, at least for awhile. He didn’t like the idea of being left behind, but he knew that his team—and Elizabeth, and even Caldwell, if it came down to it—wouldn’t just abandon him to this planet and these people.

And he supposed his condition could be worse. It was true that his broken rib made every step a subtle agony, and he worried that infection might set in or that the bone might fail to heal properly. But there was nothing he could do that he was not already doing. He couldn’t call attention to his condition by removing his shirt to examine his ribcage; likewise, he couldn’t ask for help in wrapping his ribs to ease the motion and perhaps make walking easier.

No, he needed to appear fit, or Curly would be at him with that knife.

His captors’ attitude thus far had been a kind of amused negligence; if John kept walking, they’d let him keep walking.

When he was done with his morning ablutions, which consisted of splashing water on his face and over his head vigorously, he returned to his rock and awaited their next move. He was content to sit still, though the rock was cold through his pants and the breeze had picked up as the sun rose. 

Finally, as though on an invisible signal once again, they all rose and donned their packs, filing off up the river toward what John hoped was a sturdy bridge. He followed, flanked fore and behind by Fred and Barney, respectively, who seemed to have been appointed by unspoken agreement to keep him in line, literally.

At least they didn’t glower at him like the stooges.

John’s hopes for a safe crossing of the treacherous river were dashed when he saw the native in the lead step lightly onto a boulder that was perhaps three feet from the near shore. From there, he leap-frogged out into the middle of the raging current, perching precariously—but with enviable balance—on the pointed edge of a rock that was exposed by perhaps twelve inches above the churning current.

John swallowed. It wasn’t that he didn’t have good balance; generally speaking, he passed those types of athletic tests without much trouble. But he wasn’t in his top form this day, and he knew that every jump would lead to jarring pain in his ribs, perhaps with concurrent coughing. He knew, too, that one false move would plunge him into the rapids, and he held no illusions about his chances against the fast water with its deadly obstacle course of rocks.

Still, he supposed that no one was going to give him a choice.

The speed of his captors’ crossing was remarkable, and soon enough Fred was halfway across the raging river, Barney close behind John and breathing down his neck. Barney said something to John that might have been encouragement or could have been an observation about the mating habits of the fish that could be seen now and again coursing upward against the powerful current of the great river for all that John knew or understood.

The first step wasn’t so bad; the boulder was wide and relatively flat, the water around it only mildly disturbed. The next and the one after it were equally easy, not requiring any exceptional feat of balance or strength. It was the fourth one, its sharp point jutting upward like the one-tenth of an iceberg you least want to see when you’re going full steam ahead, which made John leery. 

Barney joined him on the third rock, which really didn’t have enough room for two people, let alone Barney, who was built like a smaller version of Fred—that is to say, widely. He said something to John, and for a hysterical moment John thought of asking him to repeat himself, since the roar of the water was too loud for him to hear it clearly. Like that would matter.

When Barney put the points of his fingers between John’s shoulder blades and gave a little anticipatory shove, John figured he got the message just fine. 

Stepping back, violating the hell out of Barney’s personal space, John took the measure of the distance—perhaps five feet—between the relative safety of his current position and the definite insecurity of his next one. Gauging the distance to the far shore, he saw that he might throw his satchel before him and proceeded to do just that. 

No one complained.

Freed of one encumbrance, John focused his attention again on the math of the matter, trying to calculate the necessary velocity his jump required to keep him from missing his mark or overshooting it. 

Another shove, this one more insistent, broke his concentration, and he swore hard, took a deep breath, and then leapt out over the roiling waves. He missed the point of the rock, landing instead on the near side, which tilted at a hard angle down into the water.

His back foot slipped and plunged into the water, and he lurched forward to compensate, struggling to keep his high foot steady on the slippery face. His back foot came to a sharp halt a few inches below the water, and the shock of it drove the breath from him. Still, he took the time to center himself before stepping up onto the point.

There, he paused long enough to catch his breath, though a sharp word from behind him let John know that Barney was growing impatient.

John was facing the far bank, where a row of faces dressed in various expressions of disdainful amusement watched his dubious progress across the natural “bridge.” Ahead of him, perhaps four and a half feet away, was the fifth rock, this one broad enough to guarantee a safe landing if he could only make the jump.

He did so, but the landing drove spikes of pain through his broken rib, and he coughed, wrapping his arms around his ribcage to try to still the sickening grinding of the bones. Whatever benefit the stimulating tea had given him quickly fled in the face of this particular exertion, the effort at trying to breathe through the pain, and he was still three rocks out from the high bank of the river where his captors waited.

A shout made him look back, and he saw Barney gesture at him angrily to move, so John stepped to the far edge of the rock and watched as the other man vaulted gracefully—and apparently without effort—onto the rock that John still occupied.

Figuring that discretion was the better part of valor in this instance, John indicated that Barney should pass him, but the man only stared at him impassively until John finally gave in, clearing the three feet to the next relatively flat boulder with no real trouble, though his ribs protested the landing.

From there, John easily closed the remaining distance with two awkward but effective hops, springing finally to solid ground once more. The chief gave him a nod of approbation—or perhaps boredom, John couldn’t be sure—and then they were off once again, Barney having achieved the near bank right on John’s less-than-fleet heels.

He took it as a further sign of his new status that no one bothered to see that he followed. In fact, Barney passed him with a slight shake of his head, eating the ground in long strides to catch up with Fred. John took a quick head count to be sure, and felt his stomach slide a little when he realized that, in fact, his captors weren’t taking care to keep a guard on him anymore.

The river crossing had changed things.

John made a squelching sound every time he put his left foot down, something he noticed immediately since it was the sound that kept him company, and his wet sock rubbed uncomfortably against the thin protection of the boot sole. The trail here was uneven, and exposed rock points made for tricky travel. He found that he had to watch where he stepped because the boots provided little protection from bruising, a fact he discovered the hard way. He figured the natives were used to this, had built up calluses to account for the thinness of the leather, but his feet were spoiled by solid, standard-issue soles. He tried to hum a tune to pass the time but found that he could not remember the melody to even the simplest songs. Three aborted attempts at _The Star-Spangled Banner_ brought on the marked scrutiny of Jake, another of his captors, who was walking perhaps a tenth of a mile ahead of John. Jake paused to give John a long look that the latter couldn’t really decipher, but when he stopped humming, the native turned abruptly away and continued walking.

_Guess he doesn’t like patriotic tunes_ , John thought to himself, considering the possibility that this was a culture without music. Did such cultures even exist? He didn’t think so, but then, he hadn’t paid much attention in whatever class might have taught him that.

The march continued long into the morning. One mile blurred into the next until John thought that if he were a betting man, he’d give tedium and exhaustion even odds as the source of what would kill him.

The sun had been up for hours, filtering weakly through the creaking branches of the winter stripped trees. It was quiet except for the soughing of the wind through high branches and the occasional chirrup of an unseen bird or two. Once in awhile, John would hear a rustling in the downed leaves to one side or the other of the narrow, rocky path, but he never saw what made the sounds. The third time it happened, the commotion was interrupted by a familiar whirr, though the consequent thump was different—muffled and at some distance. 

He watched with interest as Elwood retrieved his arrow and, with it, the impaled body of a small grey animal, its body attenuated like a weasel and rodent-like in its features but for a long plume of tail. John decided to call it a squeasel—because he could—and with his eyes followed Elwood’s progress through the stalled line to its head.

There, the chief called a halt, or so John supposed, for everyone dropped his pack. Jake and Barney made quick work of unearthing a few rocks for a small fire ring while Larry collected kindling. Soon, a little fire was blazing cheerily. Soon after, Elwood presented the chief with the glistening, naked corpse of the squeasel. The chief nodded, drove it through from mouth to tail with a stick sharpened for that purpose, and handed it to Jake, who began the process of cooking it.

Apparently, others had been sent to hunt, as well, for soon enough there were three other squeasels roasting over the fire, and those not burdened with cooking duty were sitting or lying on the cold ground, staring into the fire or chatting desultorily with one another.

John felt more alone than he had yet and wondered what he was meant to be doing. No one gave him any indication, and he felt by turns ridiculous and angry that he’d been obviously excluded. He idly entertained the notion of catching his own squeasel, but since he didn’t have the appropriate equipment—or any idea how to go about it—he let that notion go almost as soon as he’d given it a thought.

The aroma of cooking meat brought home to John just how hungry he was, and he edged closer to the insular little group, eyeing the browned rodents and his captors both. Jake withdrew the first squeasel from the flames and offered it, once again, to the chief. He shook his head, said something, and then pointed to John.

There was a discontented murmur from the assembled crew, but Jake handed John the stick all the same. John took it quickly, before the chief could change his mind. Nodding his head and smiling gratefully, he said, “Thank you” to the chief and then repeated it to Jake, who had gone back to tending the fire and ignored John’s efforts at gratitude altogether.

Only the chief acknowledged John’s words, giving him the slightest of nods in return. 

John bit into the meat carefully, pulling a thin strip of tender flesh away from the haunch. He chewed slowly, savoring the flavor. It was milder than he had expected, not as gamey, and juicy. A thin stream of grease ran down John’s chin, and he wiped it away with his sleeve. 

He barely contained the moan of pleasure that threatened to betray just how happy he was to be eating something other than shriveled fruit.

He was halfway through the succulent little squeasel when he realized that the others were casting him unfriendly looks between bites of their own meat. Then he saw Moe hand Elwood the stick and it dawned on John that there were twelve of them but only four of the roasted animals.

He promptly handed the stick to Curly, who shoved it away with such violence that John nearly dropped it. He offered it to the next native in line, the one he’d dubbed Schemp, and received similar treatment. 

“C’mon, guys. I don’t have cooties,” he said, waving the meat in a general fashion, hoping that someone would take it.

The chief’s hand closed over John’s and pushed the food back at him. He said something low and grave, and John wondered if he’d offended his captors yet again. Not that he cared, of course. It was just that this time he thought he’d had them figured.

_Maybe they really do think that I have something contagious_ , he considered, bringing the rich meat back to his lips. _Oh, well. More for me._ And he settled onto the protruding root of a big tree to finish his mid-day meal in peace.

The soporific combination of cold air, weak-but-warm sunshine, and a semi-full belly overcame John shortly after he finished the squeasel. He must have fallen asleep against the trunk of the tree, still straddling the knee of the root, for the next thing he knew, he was coming awake suddenly, one hand up to defend himself from the obvious threat, the other reaching toward his back for the knife hidden there.

A harsh word, guttural and low, brought his eyes into focus and he realized that his “attacker” was the chief, who was repeating himself now, though it hardly mattered to John what he was saying. Back to the tree, he tried to catch his breath, tried to take stock of his situation. The sky was darker, grey clouds hiding the sun, and it was colder now, too. He couldn’t tell what time it might be—early afternoon or late. Two natives were attempting to flank him, and he held up one hand to either side as if to say, “Stop.”

They did, but only after a word from the chief. 

A quick head count told John that three of his captors were missing— _out hunting_ , he wondered, _or maybe scouting_. The others were resuming what they’d been doing before John had made a spectacle of himself. He ran a hand through his hair, feeling it flatten with a day’s grease and sweat.

The chief was still speaking to him, but John couldn’t figure out why. It had to be obvious to all of his captors by now that John had no idea what they were saying.

And then John noticed that it was the same series of words over and then over again, broken only by impatient, terse phrases that might have been commands.

He shook his head, shrugged, and said, “I don’t know what you’re saying to me,” just to hear his own voice.

The chief, frustration apparent on his features, touched his lips with his fingertips and then moved them rapidly away, opening his mouth as he did so.

_Oh._

This John knew. Hand signals had been one of those intuitive/associative things that had confused the hell out of John for a long time when he was at the Academy. Eventually, he’d figured out his own mnemonic system for remembering them, and after that, he had aced the course. 

Listening closely, John tried to remember the series of mellifluous sounds. After a third time, he thought he knew them well enough to try to imitate the words. To him, they sounded like:

“Oni anagawa say. Oni anakaya say. Oni inayaka oh. Oh-bey-o.”

The chief made a face that John recognized from his junior high French teacher. It was the face that suggested that had John said something particularly scandalous in good French, it would not have been more painful to hear than his butchering of simple words like “bakery” and “automobile.”

“Sorry,” he said, listening as once more the chief ran through the syllables.

John repeated it slowly and carefully, trying to capture the nuances of accent and emphasis. 

The chief said nothing but encouraged John to keep trying with a wave of his hand.

John gave the phrase again and then a fourth time. The chief interrupted him to correct this accent or that ending, until he seemed satisfied that John had gotten it right.

Then he raised his voice and sang the words with gravity and solemnity of expression, and John knew that he was screwed—again.

The sum total of John’s singing experience—the ubiquitous electric guitar in his room notwithstanding—  
involved a solo road trip from Cali to Boston, during which he sang at the top of his lungs to stay awake. He had had a crappy car with no tape deck, so he’d listened to whatever happened to be playing, except for those dry spells during which the only thing he could tune in was Christian rock. He drew the line at Amy Grant love songs, which meant that most of Utah was traversed in silence.

So it was safe to say that he didn’t have a hope in hell of managing the complicated melody that the chief was suggesting by example. Still, once again he was left without a choice, so John took as deep a breath as he could manage without straining his aching ribs, and attempted to put the sounds he had just learned to the melody he’d just been given.

From the snorts of stifled laughter that ensued, John guessed he hadn’t exactly been successful in capturing the solemnity of the song’s meaning. Only the chief maintained his serious expression, and John sighed inwardly. It seemed that he was always disappointing the big guy.

Of course, John was a _captive_ , which implied a certain unwillingness to cooperate on his part and a degree of coercion on the part of those who wanted to keep him. Moreover, John was an injured, exhausted, cold, and dirty captive who really wanted nothing more than to get warm and clean, fall fast asleep, and wake up in the infirmary. He had really never expected that he could miss Beckett’s whining insistence quite so much. What he wouldn’t give to be forced into bed rest.

It was stupid to let a song get the best of him, but try as he might, John couldn’t seem to produce a satisfactory sound for the chief. 

Then, Curly surprised him by stepping in. The dour native had wandered over to watch the proceedings with a look alternately amused and aggrieved, as though John’s mangled attempts at singing were somehow a personal affront to Curly. Now, he raised a hand as though to silence both John and the chief, who were having a kind of sing-off, during which the primary objective seemed to be to hear who was louder.

Both of them stopped at the imperious gesture. Then John got another surprise.

Curly, who was broad-shouldered and hatchet-faced, opened his mouth to sing the same phrase that John had been learning, only the voice that emerged was not the distinct, barrel-chested baritone John expected.

Instead, it was a cool, smooth tenor that reminded him of no one so much as Tony Bennett. With I Left my Heart in San Francisco playing incongruously in his head, John found it hard at first to focus. But then Curly paused and made a motion as if to say, “Follow along,” and John did.

Curly had broken each part of the melody down into its smallest part and matched it to its corresponding syllable in the song itself. In this way, John learned first the individual notes, then the sequence, and finally how long he should hold each note. 

When he demonstrated the ability to sing a rough approximation of Curly’s melodious example, both Curly and the chief seemed satisfied. Turning away from John, the latter said something to the others, and as they all rose and gathered their packs, John realized that they were ready to continue.

If John had had more time to wonder why he’d been forced to learn those words with that tune, he might have been nervous, but as it was, they had been walking scarcely an hour when he heard the distinct and definite sound of dogs barking.

John stopped, and everyone else followed suit. 

The chief, who had taken the lead, motioned John forward, and he came, not knowing what to expect. The chief reached into his own pack, extracted a small earthenware jar, opened its wood-corked mouth, dipped in his thumb, and then swiped it swiftly across John’s forehead, saying something in a loud voice to the others.

Murmuring—whether of approval or antipathy—swept the native band. John glanced at the chief, trying to read in his eyes some harbinger of his own fate.

The chief’s eyes were utterly blank, the kind of cautious erasure that usually spells bad news for someone.

_Damn it_ , John sighed to himself. 

Chapter Four: Running the Gauntlet

A few hundred yards and John could see the tendrils of smoke rising over the humped roofs of what he assumed was his captors’ village. Taking a turn in the trail, the party came in view of the wide main street of the village. A dozen dogs ran at them, barking, and John stopped, hands loosely at his sides, not wanting to appear strange and threatening.

They were running with purpose, pack-like, mouths open in that deceptive grin dogs have when they are about to rip open your throat, and John figured he was done for if the chief let them at him. 

He braced himself as the first one came within lunging distance and then felt monumentally silly when the lead dog raced past him and threw himself, yipping like a puppy, onto Larry, who was thrown onto his backside with the force of the dog’s welcome and now lay on the snow-covered ground beneath a pile of squirming, happy mutts.

John realized that he was smiling to himself, and turning to look at the chief, he saw there an answering grin, this one suggesting that the chief had known all along what had been going through John’s head.

_Damn it_ , he repeated to himself, but this time he was not so much apprehensive as he was rueful.

The apprehension came back in spades, however, when he saw the women emerging from the huts. Every one of them, young, middlin’, and old, carried a household implement of some kind—wooden spoons, fire tongs, and a few long-handled tools with wide, webbed ends, which John thought might be for carpet-beating.

From the looks on the women’s faces, it wasn’t housework they’d be putting John to.

The chief made the by now familiar gesture that indicated to John that he should sing, and so he began with his song, warbling a little at first, and not in a songbird kind of way, until he heard Curly behind him murmuring the correct melody. Catching it, John continued more confidently, though he would never be a vocal star.

Then the chief stepped aside, and John observed that the village women were now lined up in two columns, facing one another, in the middle of the main street. A shove between his shoulder blades disrupted his song, and he almost lost it again but for the warning look in the chief’s eyes. 

_Okay_ , John thought. _I’ve got to keep singing no matter what happens._

And with alien words on his unbeautiful tongue, John stepped forward into the gauntlet.

John noticed as he approached that the elderly women of the village had been placed closest to him, perhaps so that they could get first crack at him. None of the steel-haired, firm-jawed women who awaited him at the head of the line even remotely resembled the stoop-shouldered grannies he might have expected. These women stood like centurions, backs straight, heads high, eyes fixed on him with inscrutable expressions that made John more nervous than seeing hatred written there might have. 

As he passed by the first woman, she tapped him lightly on the left shoulder with her spoon, intoning something he couldn’t catch, even if he hadn’t been concentrating hard on not tripping over his own words. The second and third likewise tapped him, a nominal gesture of initiation, nothing more. Beyond them, the line stretched almost invitingly, guiding John onward into the heart of the village and the promise of rest it held.

He kept walking, head up and eyes straight ahead, song tumbling off of his lips, and they kept touching him with their household tools and murmuring words he could not make out. The motherly types were next, and though one or two were slightly more vigorous in their application of spoons or ladles, none laid even a stinging blow to his back.

But things changed subtly as he moved toward the second half of the line, past the matrons with their firm hands and their blank faces. As he came to the younger women, the contemporaries of John’s captors, the tenor of the words changed, as did the strength of the blows. Soon enough, John was feeling a stinging, and then a more insistent pain as the frequency of the lashes increased. 

These women—angry, if their tones were any indicator—were striking John more swiftly and more than once, raining blows down on his exposed back. One caught him low on his ribcage, just at the point of the suspected fracture, and he gasped and tried to swallow the shout of surprised pain, ceasing his song as he did so. 

This seemed to incite the women to greater fury.

John abandoned any pretense of composure and started to jog, ignoring the agony in his ribs even as he felt the band of fire tightening, robbing him of breath. Focusing on the end of the gauntlet, just a few dozen feet away, John tried to think of something to occupy his mind, fearing that if he let the pain get the better of his mental control, he was a goner.

The only thing that came into his head was the damned Tony Bennett tune, and so he began, haltingly at first, tasting blood on his tongue as he spit out the words.

“My love waits there in San Francisco, above the blue and windy sea,  
When I come home to you, San Francisco, your golden sun will shine for me.”

His parents had been big Rat Pack fans, and of course John had heard Ol’ Blue Eyes belt it out, but his mother had always liked Tony Bennett better, so it was that version that John knew by heart. He figured that it was a good thing that Tony Bennett was still alive and that John was in the Pegasus Galaxy because surely his version, sung through pain-gritted teeth and with liberal swearing interspersed, was the worst rendition anyone could ever have offered.

A glancing blow to his head caused him to weave into the line of women on his left, and a shout, half victory, half vicious pleasure went up. He hadn’t suspected that women could sound like that.

They shoved him hard into the line on the other side, and then, inspired by the game they’d invented, they pushed him back and forth, pinballing him up the line. John was staggering, weak and hurting, but he knew that if he fell, he’d never rise again, so he focused on keeping his feet and protecting his head. The rest of him would have to suffer.

Another blow to his ribs brought blood to his lips, and he didn’t even try to keep back the shout of pain. Through sweat-teared eyes, he glanced the blurry distance to the end of the line and realized that he wasn’t going to make it. He couldn’t take a full breath for the exquisite agony of his ribs, and a dark ring at the edge of his vision told him that he was fast losing time.

Lunging forward desperately, he tried to stay upright but felt the futility of it as he fell forward, welcoming the uprushing ground, with its cessation of grinding anguish.

But he was halted from freefall. A strong arm braced his shoulders from the front and pulled him back into a broad chest. Indistinct voices murmured in his ears, some of them angry like the whine of mosquitoes—the women expressing their displeasure—but the deep voice of the chief silenced them, and John sank into the darkness that swallowed his all.

What followed was a period that ever after he would call the “dreaming time,” for it seemed to him in his injured exhaustion that the room was full of warm light and the sweet voices of wise peoples telling their stories in song. The only vision to mar this perfect place was a wizened old man, teeth yellowed, grizzled beard stained in a matching shade, cheeks pitted with disease and one eye socket gaping wide and empty. The man would shamble toward him, more limp than leg, and squat beside his head, wafting stale breath over his immobile face.

John thought that the man spoke to him, but he couldn’t remember any of his words. All he knew was that he had understood the old man. In this village of aliens, the old man was familiar, though horrible to behold, and John wanted to see him again upon waking.

Except that when John awoke, it was dark in the room, and the air around him was heavy with fragrant smoke. There were no angelic voices, no wise women moving in graceful circles, nothing but a telling tightness around his wrapped chest and a strange sensation of floating that suggested the fragrant smoke might be more medicinal than cosmetic.

He figured that the old man was a figment, like the rest, and sank back into grateful sleep, ignoring the niggling voice in the back of his head that told him he was mistaken.

So it was with some surprise that when he woke at last and for good, John saw the gnarled visage of the man from his fever dreams hovering over him.

“Wh—“ he tried, but his throat was parched, and he couldn’t manage even a swallow, much less a request for water. 

A ladle hovered into view, the age-spotted hand holding it a gnarled testament to the passage of time but still steady. 

“Drink,” said the man, and so focused was John’s need that it took him two long swallows to realize that the man had spoken to him in English.

“You speak English,” he managed, voice a hoarse rasp. The effort to drive air through his throat to form words brought on a coughing fit then, and so whatever answer the man might have made was lost in the rib-searing spasms that made John wheeze and then gag, spitting up bile and blood into a polished stone bowl the man offered, apparently for that very purpose.

“Thanks,” he said, raising a shaking hand to wipe the moisture from his cheeks. 

The ladle came into view again. 

“Slow,” the old man growled, and had John not seen those liver-spotted lips move, he might have thought he was imagining the voice. It sounded like thunder in the valley, a long, drawn-out rumble promising rain. From the inflection and the careful way he mouthed the words, John thought that English had once been familiar to the old man but was no longer.

“Who are you?” he asked, turning his head on the pillow as he handed the ladle back. 

With deliberation born of character and not age, the old man returned the ladle to a bucket of water beside the bed. Then he turned to give John a long look with his one good eye.

“Crooked Leg,” he answered finally, having come to some judgment about John in those moments during which he had considered the wounded man in the bed.

“Pleased to meet you, Crooked Leg. I’m Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, United States Air Force.” He was tempted to rattle off his identification number, as well, but thought better of it when a twinge in his ribs reminded him not to get cocky with the talking and the breathing.

John heard, rather than felt, the shift in the air around his bed as a door was opened to admit a spill of light and a rush of cold, cold air.

A moment later, the broad face of a middle-aged woman looked down into his own, and John tried a smile, getting nothing in return for it but definite hands on his bandages, checking their tightness. She said something sharply to the old man, who grunted and said something to her in her own tongue. She clucked once and left in a huff, the straight line of her back a condemnation.

John could swear that the old man winked at him then, giving him an accompanying smirk that suggested that his elderly companion rather enjoyed baiting the woman.

“How long have I been out?” he asked.

“Three days. The fever took you.”

_Three days_ , John thought. And nothing from Atlantis? His stomach flipped, and despite its obvious emptiness, he thought that he might retch. _Three days_. What could have happened that it was taking them so long to effect a rescue?

He refused to follow the question to any of its logical conclusions, instead focusing on Crooked Leg’s one good eye and asking, “Where am I?”

The old man chuckled and said, “Oni-won-kon-to-wa-me.”

“And where’s that?” John persisted, acting as though he was fluent in whatever language his captors spoke.

“Beyond the Me-no-na-o-wah-ho,” the man likewise replied, the twinkle in his rheumy eye clear indication that he was pulling John’s leg.

“Which is what?” He wasn’t to be deterred. If the Daedalus was not on its way, if a gate team wasn’t even now trekking toward him, then John had to be ready to make his own escape, and the first thing he needed to know was his physical location in relation to the stargate. Of course, gleaning that information was probably going to be more difficult than merely grilling a foxy old coot.

“About thirty-seven miles from the ring of the Ancestors,” Crooked Leg replied.

John may have stopped breathing.

“If you flew it,” the man added, his broad grin nearly splitting his face above the sorry beard.

“Who are you?” John finally managed, voice barely above a whisper, suddenly afraid of being overheard, though he wasn’t technically saying anything worth overhearing.

“Crooked Leg,” the man answered, standing stiffly up from the low stool beside John’s bed. “I’ll bring your dinner.” He had reverted back to the stunted speech of the earlier encounter, and John was overcome with a wave of unreasoning anger.

“Look,” he said, biting the word out from between his tightly clenched teeth. “I want to know who you are and why you’re here. I want you to tell me who these people are and the reason that they’ve captured me. And I want to know the best way back to the gate. Do you understand me?”

His imperious tone raised not even an eyebrow on the amused old man, who merely smiled at John’s ire and shrugged elaborately.

“I know nothing.” 

And then he was gone from the dimly lit room, and John was alone.

Chapter Five

It was only after Crooked Leg left that John realized how badly he had to urinate. It occurred to him that the hut didn’t seem to have indoor plumbing, and while he was used to taking care of things in the field, he wasn’t sure what…well, field…he was supposed to use on this account. Also, a quick glance under the covers told John that he was wearing only a light cotton nightshirt and nothing more. That might prove problematic if the privies were well outside and downwind of the camp.

And damn it all if he hadn’t lost his last two knives.

A glance around the room offered John nothing that might help. It was dim and smoky inside the tent, the air close and moist, and he spied what he supposed was a kind of primitive brazier pouring fumes out into the already cloudy air. The smoke was no longer of the heady variety he’d been inhaling earlier; this had a cleaner smell, sharper and more green, and he thought it might be some Pegasus variety of sage. 

He struggled to sit up on his elbows so that he could swing his legs around, and after several minutes of concentrated cursing, John had nothing to show for his efforts except sweat and a sore torso. Straining against the tightness of the bandages made him dizzy with exertion, and he felt a lot like an idiot when he finally gave in and called out, “Hey! Anybody? Hey, some help here…”

Light pierced the gloom of the room’s interior as a door—or, he saw, a heavy leather flap, weighted on the bottom to make it hang plumb—was pulled aside to admit the same middle-aged caregiver who had been in to see him earlier, the one Crooked Leg had teased.

For his own sake, John hoped that the woman didn’t blame John for the old man’s sense of humor.

She came to the edge of the bed and bent to get the ladle from the bucket.

“No,” John said, “Thank you. I actually have some water to get rid of,” he continued, realizing his problem wasn’t merely logistical. 

John sighed and said, “I don’t suppose you could go get Crooked Leg?”

A tightening at the edges of the woman’s thin lips was sign enough that John’s request would go unheeded.

“No, I guess not. Uh…” How to indicate to this woman who reminded him of his fifth grade art teacher that he had to take a leak?

John banged his head a little against the rolled fabric that served for a pillow.

“I need to…” and he waved his hand in the general area of his bladder. At least, he hoped it was the bladder.

The woman’s face sparked acknowledgement of his words, and she pulled the covers away, put a surprisingly strong arm behind his shoulders, and helped him to bring his legs around to the side of the bed—or pallet, he realized, viewing its construction for the first time. The mattress—a sturdy material, he noted, filled with something soft, probably feathers—lay atop a low, short-legged pallet, which in turn stood on a raised platform that ran the length of one side of the room. He also noticed that the hut’s exterior walls were solidly constructed, no daylight filtering through what he concluded were daub and wattle walls.

Even with the height of the platform, John discovered that he had no trouble reaching the ground, a fact for which he was grateful when the woman urged him onto his feet and he realized just how weak he really was. Despite the woman’s considerable strength, John sagged back against the platform, resting against the edge and holding up a hand to signal that she should give him a minute.

Abruptly, the woman let him go and left the hut.

John’s breathing was ragged, labored, and he was sweating again. He hated being so weak; it made him feel helpless, and he didn’t like being at the mercy of others. Others, he had learned through hard experience, rarely had any mercy.

He considered the many reasons that the woman might have left. _Well, it couldn’t have been something I said_ , John thought, staring at his bare feet, which looked naked and pale against the plain pine planks that made up the floor. He wondered idly where “his” boots were and made a cursory inspection of the room—or what he could see of it without the benefit of light. He didn’t find his clothes, but then, there seemed to be a lot of nooks and crannies for a room that couldn’t have been more than fifteen by eighteen.

One of those nooks must hold a fire, John considered, given that the little hut was positively stuffy to him and he was wearing only a thin cotton-type shift. He would have liked to explore, but he knew better than to try. He couldn’t even make it to the bathroom, after all.

Just as John was about to piss into the water bucket and hope that no one noticed, the door-flap was pulled aside to admit the familiar figure of the chief.

He was dressed much as he had been when he’d captured John, with the exception that he no longer wore a belt or a hunting knife and the soft shirt was of a smoky green color, obviously not intended for winter camouflage.

Without preamble, the chief stalked up to John, put a careful arm around John’s shoulders, and urged him toward the corner of the room. As they shuffled slowly closer to the corner, the speed predicated by John’s shaking legs, he realized that what he’d mistaken for a part of the exterior wall was actually a kind of partition, behind which, as he now discovered, was a low wooden seat with a wide, flat lid, which the chief opened briskly. Then, he unceremoniously hiked John’s shirt up, holding its hem above John’s waist, and gave the ailing man a little push toward the opening.

John saw that he was facing a kind of indoor privy, though he could not tell of what construction, given the overall dimness of the room. There was no odor, which struck John as odd, and he wondered if this were a rarely used visitor’s hut or something, which might explain the privy’s lack of characteristic odor. 

Beside him, the chief shifted minutely, and John remembered what they had come here for. Of course, now that he’d been reminded that he had an audience, John wasn’t sure he could perform.

Sure, he’d waved it around in front of hundreds of guys in his lifetime of military service. But he’d never actually attempted to piss while being held upright by another guy, especially one who was holding the hem of his “skirt” out of the way in a gentlemanly fashion. 

It was more than a little weird, and John couldn’t help the little rueful laugh that left him. He couldn’t imagine Ronon having this problem.

Still, remembering the time he’d been in the hospital after a training flight accident, when the nurses had had to help him do everything for the first few days of doped-out strangeness, John relaxed and let it go.

Once his business was taken care of, John pulled the hem of the nightshirt out of the chief’s helping hand and indicated that he was ready to return to bed. He wouldn’t have admitted it in any language, but the little bathroom break had taken a lot out of him.

The chief helped him step back out of the narrow privy space and then guided him to a nearby wide-brimmed pottery bowl full of fresh water, next to which was a smaller dish with a brown lump that John assumed was soap. He washed his hands and wrists, splashed his face and hair, dried them all on a smooth scrap of material similar to that of which the chief’s shirt was constructed, and felt about a hundred times more human than he had in a long while.

His hair was still greasy, and he could only imagine how it must look after three straight days in bed, but John didn’t care. He had peed and washed up a little and now he was ready for another nap.

The chief guided him efficiently back to the bed, helped him to pull his feet up on the pallet, a feat that John found humiliatingly difficult given the inflexibility of his bandages and the way that using his abdominal muscles sent tearing pain up through his chest. 

Then his captor turned to leave.

“Wait,” John said, sleep already thickening his tongue. The chief paused with the flap half-open. The sunlight from outside carved his face into peaks and shadows, but John thought the man might be smiling.

“Thanks,” he said, wishing for the first time that he knew the word in the chief’s own language.

But the chief seemed to understand, for the suspected smile burst out in earnest, and John was startled to realize that the native wasn’t much older than himself. The sternness of his usual expression and his overall demeanor made him seem older than his years. Then he was gone from the hut.

Over the course of the next several days, Crooked Leg paid John several visits, answering some of John’s questions but mostly pretending that he didn’t understand what John was asking. Through this imprecise method of interrogation, John learned that he was in the Healing Hut and that the middle-aged woman who was tending to his wounds so ably was named Deer Woman Running. He learned how to say “please” and “thank you,” “water” and “toilet” in the tongue of his captors and that they were called, collectively, The People of the Lake and Plain in English. The words in their own language proved utterly unpronounceable for John, so he settled for calling them The People. 

Now and then, the chief would stop by, and John finally wheedled it from Leg that the chief’s visits were not solely motivated by selfless solicitude. In fact, John had been captured by the chief and so belonged to him. It was up to the chief to see to John’s well-being until such time as he could either be officially adopted by the chief or traded to another member of the tribe. Had it not been for the chief’s keen recognition of John’s true condition, John would have been killed by the women in the gauntlet. Because of John’s dangerous injuries, however, the chief had had legitimate grounds to suspend the proceedings.

Leg seemed especially gleeful to relay word to John that the latter would be expected to complete the gauntlet in its entirety when he was feeling better.

John was glad for the distraction of Leg’s visits, even if the man’s teasing reticence was sometimes frustrating. It kept him from thinking about the growing coldness in the region of his heart, a familiar feeling that he’d learned to hate when he was trapped on Teer’s not-so-idyllic little world. Waiting with growing impatience and then growing despair had eaten away at him, but at least there he’d been able to run and run until his legs were numb and his breathing harsh in his throat, until spots swam before his eyes and sweat stung them. 

Stuck on his pallet, frustrated and bored, John had to fight every inclination to consider his true circumstances. It wasn’t so much denial as survival.

_They’ll come for me_ , John told himself. _I know that they won’t leave me again._ He even entertained the idea that he might once again be trapped in a time dilation field, but he dismissed it almost immediately. Surely, Rodney would have noticed those familiar energy readings. Of course, the LSD had been on the fritz, so it was possible that there was some other energy anomaly at work here, John supposed.

Anyway, it did him no good to wonder, since there was little he could do at the present moment but lie there and heal and wait for his chance to escape.

Until such a time, John was confined to the Healing Hut and to enforced inactivity, due mostly to his wounds but also because John was a little afraid of Deer Woman Running, or Woman, as Leg called her. She was formidable and did not like to be crossed, as John had discovered to his detriment when she’d caught him using the privy without her help. The tea she’d been plying him with was that night especially bitter.

Why she tolerated Leg’s impertinent behavior, his sly innuendos and sassing back, was a mystery to John, until the day he awoke from a nap to find Woman perched in Leg’s lap, giggling like a school girl as he tickled her. John closed his eyes, gave a kind of choking snort to indicate his awakening, and then made an elaborate show of opening his eyes once more. When he did so, Woman was standing on the opposite side of the hut, busying herself with the washing bowl, and Leg was limping toward his usual low stool next to John’s bed.

“Thanks for the warning,” Leg said lowly, glancing toward Woman to be sure she did not hear him.

John tried to hide his astonishment. Leg was far more observant than John had ever suspected.

“Sure,” John answered easily, unable to keep a sly, guy’s grin off of his face. Leg answered it with one of his own, which was only wiped away by the clatter of spoon on bowl as Woman brought John a bowl of stew.

Things might have gone on in this easy sort of way for an indefinite period of time—the rib knit slowly, and John was still fairly weak from his bed rest—except for the raiding party that struck one night under the new moon and burned two huts at the far end of the village.

John wasn’t sure what woke him—the screams of terror or the shouts of rage—but he came fully awake when he smelled the smoke. Swinging his legs carefully over the edge of the pallet, he felt around with his toes on the floor until he found the soft-soled hide shoes that he might have called moccasins if he were back home. He slid them on and stood, waiting to see if his legs, weak from lack of use, would hold him. His ribs protested the swift shifting of position, but he held his side with one careful arm until the worst of the pain passed, and then, grabbing the top blanket off of his bed and wrapping it around the shift—all efforts at cajoling them into giving him pants had failed miserably—he shuffled outside.

It was obvious where the commotion was coming from, for people were passing him on the run, women and men carrying buckets, children piled high with blankets. He felt like he was moving backward, for he could go only slowly, one cautious step after the other, and soon enough he was alone on the street.

He considered that this was the first time he’d had the opportunity to escape since he’d come to the village. And he was in no state to attempt it, even if he had had pants. His broken rib, though knitting, was still a source of constant, pressing agony while he was upright, and days of bedrest had robbed him of his usual supple strength.

He felt like he was ninety years old and shook his head in disgust at the wheezing breaths issuing forth from his lips in plumes of cold steam.

The slipper-like soles did nothing to protect his feet from the cold, but at least the road on which he traveled had been raked free of stones, so barring some unforeseen obstacle, John thought he might make it to the place at some distance where a distinct glow suggested that something was on fire. Against the brilliance of starlight, he could see smudges of dark smoke rising, and once in awhile, a definite flame would rise in a column above the burning object below, which was just out of his sight around a slight bend in the road.

John labored onward, cursing his weakness and the cold, which was making every inhaled breath a special hell. 

Eventually, however, all moving objects—no matter how slowly they move—must come to a stop, and so he did, at the very edge of a wide semi-circle of anxiously murmuring women and children, who were standing back from the blazing huts—two of them, John thought—which were total losses, if the strength of the flames and the rolling heat were any indication. In the firelight, the burnished faces showed various expressions, from disbelief to anger to a stunned denial. Only one—that of a tall, older man John had never seen before—was defiant, as though the fire had challenged him and he was answering it.

John saw that the man he called chief stood next to this older warrior—for warrior he most obviously was, from his steel-rod posture to his ever watchful eyes—and for the first time it occurred to John that perhaps his captor was not the leader of this village. 

The older man stepped forward, dangerously close to the licking flames of the now dying fire, and raised his hand. Silence descended, broken only by the popping of the fire at his back. He spoke, voice low but strong, words measured, no hint of rage to mar them. John did not know, naturally, what the man said, but twice during the short speech his words raised an answering cry from the crowd, and when he finished, there was a long moment of respectful silence before all tongues broke out in a strange ululation, which John took to be a sign of approbation.

Soon after that, the crowd began to disperse back to their homes, save for a small group of warriors—among them Curly, Larry, Barney, and the chief—who worked at stomping out the remaining fire and pouring water on the steaming ruins. John thought it might be wise for him to shuffle off, too, but before he could slip away—or crawl, as the case might very well be, for his muscles had stiffened while he stood there, lock-kneed and swaying—a hand on his shoulder halted him.

“Woman’s going to have your hide,” Leg noted with a degree of relish typical of him. John was convinced that Leg was a closet sadist.

“I’m going back to the Healing Hut right now,” John answered, trying to move away. Truthfully, even if Leg had been a weak old man—which he decidedly was not—John couldn’t have wrenched out of his grasp. As it was, John was struggling to stay upright.

“I’ll go with you,” Leg answered, putting action to words by pushing John along the street ahead of him. “Woman would blame me if you fell down and froze to death, and I’d never hear the end of it.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” John said with mock-solemnity, knowing the game that Leg was playing. He was willing to pretend that the old man’s interest was merely selfish, if the old man would only pretend that John could have gotten in on his own.

They walked slowly, Leg letting John set the pace, and silence of the companionable sort stretched between them.

Finally, John said, “So how did the fire get started?”

Leg grunted and spat expressively into the dirt of the street. “Ka-man-tees,” he said, giving John a glare with his single eye. “Thieves,” he translated, marred face drawn up into an even more horrific visage.

“Is that what they call themselves?” John wondered out loud, and Leg gave an ugly chuckle.

“Ah-no-ik-te,” he said, drawing the harsh word out oddly. “The People of the Northern Woods. From above Wa-na-na-wo-me, the Lake of Many Clouds.”

“Why would they come here in the winter? Isn’t it kind of far for a raiding party in this weather?”

Leg shook his head at John, suggesting by gesture alone what an idiot the colonel was.

“The east end of the lake is shallow,” he explained slowly, as though he were talking to an especially slow child. 

“It freezes,” John guessed. “And they can walk across.”

Leg grunted. “Sled,” offered in grudging acknowledgment that perhaps John wasn’t quite as stupid as Leg had thought.

“But why burn just the two huts? Why not attack the whole village?”

Leg laughed again, but this one was hollow and had something of desperation in it. “Those huts held our grain and stores.”

John stopped, feeling Leg’s arm collide with his back where he’d been shadowing John’s halting movements.

He turned to look at Leg and saw a tightness around the old man’s mouth that John recognized, for he’d seen the same on Elizabeth during their first year, when the rationing had started: fear. Fear that her people would starve to death or be forced to beg from hostile aliens for the basic necessities.

“Did you lose everything? All the food?” 

Leg shook his head. “They didn’t get the smokehouse—full of a-u-mak meat from the last hunt. And there are some cold stores.”

“But no grain…”

“Means sickness,” Leg finished, nodding sharply and looking away from John. “Many will die.”

He turned and began to limp away, and John did not know whether to follow or stay behind. But an impatient gesture behind his back indicated that Leg wanted John to keep walking, and so they made their slow way toward the Healing Hut, looking together like two warriors come back from a battle that had gotten the better of them both.

Chapter Six: Settling In

The next day, John was woken harshly from sound sleep by Deer Woman Running’s importunate hands. She said something to him as soon as he cracked open his sleep-sticky eyes, and he knew just enough of her language to discern that she wanted him to get up.

At the end of the pallet were a set of clothes: worn hide leggings like all of the men of The People wore, and a long-sleeved shirt made of a soft, heavy material. His boots were there, too, the ones that Larry had forced upon him those many days ago, in what now seemed like another lifetime, separated from this one by long dreams of a different life.

John swung his legs over the edge of the pallet, and Woman brought him a cup of the steaming hot tea he’d come to enjoy in the mornings. Whatever its stimulant properties, John thought it could give coffee a run for its money as favorite breakfast beverage, and he wondered if Rodney would consent to the switch.

Thinking of the snarky physicist gave John a twinge of homesickness, and he swallowed it down and shoved Atlantis to the back of his mind, where he kept all of the unpleasant possible outcomes of his captivity.

He dressed as quickly as his still-healing injuries would allow, took care of his morning ablutions, and then exited the tent when Woman pointed an imperious finger that way.

The chief was waiting for him outside, along with several of the men that John recognized from their original party. Leg was nowhere to be seen.

The chief stepped forward and said, “No-wah-ta-eye,” pointing at his own chest.

John repeated what must be the bigger man’s name and then pointed to his own chest, saying, “Sheppard.”

“Shay-ah-par,” No-wah-ta-eye echoed, and John smiled. 

“Close enough.”

The chief nodded, satisfied with some private consideration, it seemed, and motioned that John should fall in beside him as he walked.

It was only after a moment of walking that John noticed a familiar dual phalanx lining the main street ahead. Beyond it rose a tall, long building, hide double-flaps pulled back, smoke curling up the center pole and out into the fresh winter morning.

_Meeting hall?_ John wondered, trying to ignore the flutter of nerves in his belly at the sight of the gauntlet. He’d known this day would come; he’d just been hoping it would be later.

Of course, he supposed that wandering around the village in nothing but slippers and a blanket hadn’t helped his “I’m too helpless to play your sick games” cause.

This time, though, even the young women offered him only token taps, and soon he was emerging from the other side and being led into the big lodge by No-wah-ta-eye and the others, whom John was beginning to believe were some kind of kin or clan to his captor.

Inside the lodge waited the older man that John had seen at the fire the night before. He was sitting on a raised bench, flanked by three other men and two women, all of or near the age of the chief himself, for John was now sure that this man did indeed hold the primary position in the tribe.

No-wah-ta-eye left John standing in the bare circle before the chief and his council—for surely these were the village elders. People filed in behind him, but John didn’t dare to turn around and look, for he did not know if that would be considered rude, and he also had the definite impression that the chief was sizing him up.

So he stood patiently, running over baseball scores in his head and trying not to think about what his team and the others were doing back on Atlantis right now.

Finally, when the sound in the hall had risen to a kind of rumbling murmur, the chief said something, which brought silence as abruptly as it had the night before. John felt a presence at his elbow and turned to see Crooked Leg standing there.

John didn’t dare ask why he was there, and he didn’t have to, for as soon as the chief stood and began to speak, Crooked Leg translated for him.

“We have gathered here in assembly this day to determine the fate of this man, he who comes from beyond the Eye of the Ancestors, he who is called Shay-ah-par.”

“What does he—“ John began, but Leg gave him a significant look, and John fell silent.

The chief continued, intoning in a solemn, even voice and making broad motions of explanation with his hands. He was a good orator, if John were to judge by the faces of the listeners, rapt in attention as they were.

The speech went on for some time, with Leg translating only a third of it, perhaps, explaining in his low growl that John didn’t need to hear all of it.

“Lot of it is ceremonial.” By which John was to understand that Leg was giving him only the important parts, the parts, John hoped, that pertained directly to that ominous phrase about “determining” his “fate.”

“He is telling them how you came to be captured by Falling Stone,” which was the first time that John had heard the English translation of his captor’s name. “When Falling Stone and his party saw you and your friends, they took it as a sign that you were meant to come with them, to replace He Who Waits and Watches.”

John began to ask, but Leg anticipated the question. “He was killed two nights before you were captured.”

“How?” John ventured, hoping that he wasn’t violating some sacred protocol. Though he never would have wanted the same fate to befall her, John was starting to wish that Elizabeth were here negotiating his release. 

“Waits was killed by an a-u-mak during the hunt. You wear his boots,” Leg added, as though that were a significant detail. John was wondering what the hell an a-u-mak was, but he didn’t have time to ask.

“The chief says,” Leg continued, as though he hadn’t just gifted John with more information in that single, brief interchange than John had been able to learn over the seven days he’d had since waking from his fever dreams.

“…and you are another mouth to feed.”

John realized that he’d missed something while mulling over Leg’s revelation concerning He Who Waits and Watches. “Wait,” he whispered softly. “What did he say?”

Leg gave him an impatient look that spoke volumes. It said, “If we are deciding whether you live or die, the least you can do is pay attention.”

Aloud, he gruffed, “You were taken when we had enough in store of grains and the summer’s harvest. Now, we are facing the death of many, and to feed a stranger seems too much.”

“Well, if you give me enough—“ but again, Leg cut him off, this time with a short, chopping motion of his hand.

“The chief says that it must be decided amongst all who gather here.”

“Don’t I get a say in the matter? It’s my life we’re talking about!” Sheppard raised his voice, not especially caring that he was being rude. 

The chief skewered him with a pointed look, and John felt as though he had been chastised, but he forged on anyway. 

“Among my people, a person is allowed to defend himself, to speak his case when it is his life at stake.”

John supposed that was a rather broad rendering of capital law in some states, but he didn’t much care. He wanted to suggest a few options other than killing him, for in the eyes of the assembled tribe, he could already see his doom.

Leg had translated John’s words, and the chief looked thoughtful for a long moment before nodding and saying, “A-ho,” which John knew meant, “I agree” or “Yes” or any of a dozen other possibilities, largely depending on the context.

Then the chief made a motion, suggesting that John come forward further into the open circle before the council of elders.

He stepped forward, suddenly nervous, knowing that he could very well hold his own life in his hands. He was used to doing that with flight controls. Words were a tool he had never been good with, and he feared the outcome here. But he had no choice, and so he shrugged a little, drew himself up straight—at the expense of a sharp twinge in his bandaged rib—and began.

“You do not need to kill me to remove me from the village. You can give me two days’ supply, just enough to get me back to the Eye of the Ancestors, where I can return to my own people. We could even send you food through the Eye, for we have much where I come from, and we often help people who have been attacked by the Wraith.”

John had seen no signs that The People were a culture living in fear of Wraith culling, but he couldn’t imagine that they did not know of the deadly predators and their ravenous raids. He figured that it couldn’t hurt to show that he was of a people capable of surviving Wraith attacks. It might give him some sort of an edge.

He waited until Leg translated and then longer, as a wave of murmurs rolled through the large hall. Finally, the chief had to rap his knuckles sharply on the table to gain silence from his people. When all talk had ceased, he nodded again to John.

While the crowd had spoken and wondered, John had sought the eyes of Falling Stone, who throughout the proceeding had stood erect, eyes staring off into the middle distance, as though none of the discussion had any connection to him or the man he had captured, dragged through the wilderness, and then saved from a bloody and awful death.

Keeping his eyes steady on Falling Stone, who was now focused on John, as well, John continued. 

“If you will not let me go, then let me hunt and earn my place here. Falling Stone chose me for my strength, for something he saw in me that he thought could be of use to The People. Let me be useful. I will do whatever is necessary to help The People survive the winter. If I do not prove myself to you, then you can convene again and decide to kill me. But give me a chance, at least, to show you that I can help.”

John hoped that he didn’t sound like he was begging, but he didn’t relish the idea of being summarily killed after all of the trouble he’d taken to survive this long. Besides, it couldn’t be too long before someone from Atlantis came for him, and he thought it would be a bitter blow to Elizabeth if she were to find that they’d been only a few days too late.

Of course, there was no real reason for John to think that they were coming soon, but to think the alternative was to give in to a stomach-churning despair that threaded ice through his heart, so he chose to believe that his rescue was imminent.

There were further murmurs from The People, all of whom seemed to have an opinion on John’s words.

The chief spoke, and Leg nudged him, making him break eye contact with Falling Stone.

“The chief wants to know who are the Wraith?”

John pondered the question in silence for a few moments, wondering how he should answer. Could they really not know of the Wraith? 

Shrugging, then, John figured it wouldn’t hurt them to know. He briefly entertained the idea of telling them that the Wraith were space vampires, but then he figured he’d have to explain what a vampire was, and his Bela Lugosi impression was a little rough. Instead, he said, “The Wraith are a race of life-sucking aliens who live in hives, living ships that that fly from planet to planet, harvesting the human populations for food.”

Leg’s eyes lit up with knowing, and he turned to the chief, giving a two-word answer. The chief, in turn, nodded sagely and relayed the word to the entire assembly.

John gave Leg a raised eyebrow in inquiry, and the old man smiled. “The creatures you describe we call The Ghost Riders. But they are only legend among The People.” Despite the apparent levity of Leg’s smile, however, John saw something in the old man’s eyes, a recognition of John’s description that went deeper than simple legend.

“You’ve seen the Wraith,” he hazarded, seizing on the first possibility that came to him.

Leg shook his head vehemently and barked, “No,” louder than John had ever heard him speak. The nearest of The People hushed to look over at John and Leg where they stood in the circle.

“You have,” John insisted. “You are not of The People, are you? I mean, originally.”

Leg pulled away from John’s hand, which he had wrapped around Leg’s arm, as if by sheer force of will John could wring the truth from the old man. John was peering closely at Leg’s features, as though by minute inspection he could discern the man’s origins.

“Leave it,” Leg growled, and this time John heard panic in his voice, panic and a pain so old and enormous that John thought Leg might leave the tent to escape it.

“I’m sorry,” John said, trying to sound sincere. He hadn’t meant to hurt Crooked Leg. After all, the man was his only real…well, friend, John guessed…at least, he was the only one who spoke John’s language.

Leg ignored John’s apology, for the chief was speaking again, calling for order, John figured from the silence that descended and the watchful expressions on the faces of the gathered people.

“He says that they have had time to consider your suggestions and now they must vote. You cannot be here for the vote,” Leg added, pinching John’s elbow harder than was strictly necessary and guiding him toward the doors.

Once at the opening of the flap, Leg let go, giving John a little shove for good measure. “Come when you hear your name,” he said tersely, receding back into the relative darkness of the council lodge.

John looked around. It was barely mid-day, he guessed, looking at the pale sun through its scant covering of thin winter clouds. He walked slowly over to a bench made of hewn logs, and lowered himself carefully onto it. In the excitement of the “trial,” he hadn’t paid any attention to his physical state, but the fact was that John was tired already. He shook his head in self-disgust and considered getting up and walking around the lodge a few times, just to get a start at recovering some muscle tone. But he was bone weary, and his ribs ached, and the air was cold on his exposed skin. So he sat there, head down, feet splayed, watching the ground between his ankles as though there were something there to see.

His mind went back to Leg’s face when John had prodded him about the Wraith. John knew what he’d seen there—recognition, a fleeting acknowledgment that the Wraith were as real to Crooked Leg as they were to John. But Leg was an old man, even by earth standards, let alone the standards of The People, whose apparent mortality was considerably younger than John had expected—at least among the men. There were many old women, but only a few old men, and none of them were as old as Leg.

John wondered why Leg wasn’t the chief, and then realized that if Crooked Leg were not of The People originally, if he were adopted from some other tribe—or people—or from some other planet altogether—it wasn’t likely that he’d be allowed to take a position of leadership, no matter how long he’d lived among The People as one of their own.

John gave fleeting consideration to the unfairness of that, wondering if he could persuade them to change their viewpoint for the exception he represented, and then found himself horrified to realize he’d been thinking of himself as an old man among The People.

Shaking free of the disturbing thoughts and the chill that they carried with them, John got up and began a slow pace in front of the lodge doors. Six paces to the left, six back to where he’d started. Six paces to the left, six back to the doors. It was a boring and repetitive pattern, but it had the dual advantage of keeping John’s mind off of what was transpiring inside the lodge and keeping him warm, for he was starting to feel the chill of the day all the way to his bones.

Just as he was starting to consider a walk to the treeline to take a leak, the door flap parted enough to show Leg’s shadowed figure inside the lodge. He said, “Come” and then disappeared, not waiting for John before dropping the flap back in place.

John walked stiffly to the flap, pulled it aside as gracefully as he could—he was still getting used to the way the heavy, bottom-weighted leather bent and swayed when it was moved—and entered the lodge. He paused just inside the doors to let his eyes adjust to the darkness within and then moved cautiously ahead.

The chief nodded to indicate that John had come far enough into the wide circle before council. Then he stood and said a few words. Leg did not translate.

John sought the eyes of Falling Stone to see if he could tell by looking at his captor what the decision had been. He was startled to discover that the man was no longer in his former place, and a brief scan of the crowd suggested to John that in fact Falling Stone was not in the tent at all.

With a sinking feeling in his belly, John turned to face the chief once more as the tall man spoke again.

This time, Leg said, “The chief says that you are welcome to make yourself of use to The People. Tonight, you will undergo the rituals of welcoming. Tomorrow, you will leave for the raid.”

Before John could ask, “Raid? What raid?” The People were rising as one, clapping and calling out in loud voices, some of them saying his name in their broken, lilting strains, some of them angry-sounding and blunt with their words. They streamed by him, some reaching out to touch his hair or his shoulders or his hands. Someone touched his ass and he startled at the goosing, craning his neck around to see who it was so fast that he thought he might have given himself a touch of whiplash. Then, it was just John and the chief and Crooked Leg. 

The chief approached John, stood over him for a long minute, looking into his eyes wordlessly. Then he nodded, more to himself than to John, and brushed by him and was gone.

John said to Leg, “What raid?”

Leg only laughed without humor and said, “Worry about the welcoming first. The raid is tomorrow’s worry.” Then he, too, left the tent.

John wondered what could be so bad about a welcoming ritual. Surely the gauntlet had been the worst of it? And where had Falling Stone gone that he was not there to hear the verdict concerning John’s fate? Overcome with exhaustion and guessing that he’d need his strength for the night’s events, John moved from the tent himself and wandered back to the Healing Hut, hearing strange voices calling excitedly to him and around him as he walked.

Because he was lost and did not know the words, he simply kept his eyes down and trudged on. He had a feeling it was going to be a long night.

Chapter Seven

 

John had been asleep for only a few minutes, it seemed, though it must have been longer, for he was woken roughly from a dream about an Atlantis that floated in the clouds, tethered to the planet far below by slender silver wires that, as he watched, were sliced apart by Wraith darts.

He was glad to open his eyes, therefore, to Woman’s impatient face. Looking beyond her, he saw that he had quite an audience. At least a dozen women of the tribe were huddled together, giggling, at the far side of the hut from his sleeping pallet. He maneuvered himself into a sitting position and was glad that he’d fallen asleep in his clothes. With the caution of a man with tender ribs, John bent to pull on his boots and then stood, wanting to avail himself of the hut’s facilities but unsure how to do so in front of so many women.

He gave Deer Woman Running a speaking look, and with a word and a wild flap of her hand, she herded the giggling group of women out of the place. She herself followed, barking an order over her shoulder that John knew meant, “Hurry up.” 

It wasn’t that he’d learned that phrase; it was just that he’d heard it so often in the same tone from various women in his life over the years.

When he emerged from the Healing Hut, John was feeling a little more in sorts, having washed the sleep from his eyes and run a hand through his still-greasy hair. He missed the opportunity to bathe and was getting tired of the sponge baths that Woman had prepared for him every evening before he retired. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the native woman’s efforts to heat the water, pour it into a clay basin, and provide him with the rough animal fat soap and soft scrap of cloth used for the purposes of bathing. On the contrary, John had actually moaned aloud the first time he’d been able to put water to skin after he’d awoken from his injuries. No, he wasn’t ungrateful; he just missed the steady stream of hot water pouring from the shower head or even a steaming, deep tub of clean water, though he’d never been a bath person.

John should have remembered the old admonishment about being careful what one wishes for.

The women, still laughing over some private—and apparently hilarious—joke, gathered around John, Woman in the lead, heading for someplace to the west of the village. John had come from the east and had had no chance to explore this part of the village, so he was happy to follow, listening to the melody of the high voices as they washed over him.

Now and then, he heard a word that he knew—a’ho, tea, water, and another that seemed familiar but that he couldn’t place, until he realized that it had been in his song. John struggled to remember the words, which now seemed like they had been sung by a stranger and years ago. The woman to his right, a girl, really, no more than sixteen or seventeen, was slight and round-faced, with a happy smile that lit her eyes and made her lips curl. She had said, “Oni,” and he remembered it now, humming the tune almost soundlessly under his breath and trying to remember the order of the syllables.

Round-cheeks paused, slowing her pace, and gave John a look; then, she flashed a grin, all teeth and pink tongue, and called out something to the others, who laughed loud and long. Woman said something to John, and he shook his head, not understanding her, until she put her fingers to her lips and drew them away in a very familiar gesture.

They wanted him to sing his song.

He shook his head and said, “No,” with a smile on his face. 

Woman persisted, and the others joined in with words that were obviously teasing in nature.

Finally, John relented enough to sing the verse once.

All of the women cheered and clapped, and Round-cheeks said something wicked, if the glint in her eye and the raucous responses of the others were any indication.

John tried not to look as puzzled as he felt.

Soon enough, they had left the outskirts of the village behind them and were winding their way through a forest of saplings that by their bark alone reminded John of silver birches. The undergrowth was sparse—dried brown grasses and the remnants of berry vines that he imagined were heavy with fruit in the height of summer—and the path on which they walked well-beaten and free of rocks.

He heard the water before he saw it, the burbling of fast water over round rocks. At some distance, there must be a minor falls, for he could hear the signifying rushing sound. As always, it made him long to seek out the source of the sound, but the women were intent on their path, and soon they came to the stream itself, a wide mountain brook throwing itself merrily over and around the stones in its path. In a few places were larger slabs of rock, and the water running under them made deep sounds like song. John’s father had told him, when John was younger and more impressionable, that these were the words of God, and if John could understand them, he would be the keeper of God’s most precious secrets.

John shook off a sudden cloying nostalgia and watched as the Woman turned upstream and kept walking, he and the others following suit like especially obedient sheep. She stopped perhaps thirty yards from the main trail at a place where the brook made a wide turn and slowed. It was shallower here and clearer; John could see yellow leaves in the silt of the bottom. Some animal, small and with busy feet, had left its prints near the water’s edge.

Woman said something to John, and the women parted to let him walk to her. Once before Woman, he waited, listening to her words carefully but understanding none. She pointed to him and then to the water in an unmistakable way, however, and it occurred to John suddenly that perhaps she wanted him to go in the water.

He shook his head decisively and said, “No water,” although he wasn’t precisely sure that those two words could be combined in that way without meaning something else entirely. For all he knew, he might have just gravely insulted Deer Woman Running’s grandmother.

When she didn’t slap him but merely repeated words and gestures, John decided that perhaps he was going to have to humor her, so he bent toward the water carefully and scooped some in his hand. It was icy cold, and even the brief exposure of his hand to it made his fingers ache.

He reluctantly splashed the water on his face and gave her a hopeful look.

She merely glowered in response and repeated the hand motions again, this time with a bit more violence and a lot less grace.

John sighed. He shook his head again, repeated the words, “No water,” and backed away—and right into Round-cheeks, who reached around his waist to tug at the lacing of his pants.

He leapt forward. “Hey, now! Uh, let’s leave that alone, okay?” But she was implacable, closing in on him with her hands out. He backed away from her, hands up and out, whether imploring or fending her off, he couldn’t say, but he promptly bumped into another woman—this one with a single, long, straight braid down her back and almond-shaped, laughing eyes.

She reached around him and began to unfasten his leggings in the same manner that Round-cheeks had tried, and he slapped her hands away instinctively.

This earned him a sound scolding from Woman, who was standing by with an expression of mixed amusement and chagrin.

But John was desperately outnumbered, and these women clearly had an agenda, for suddenly there were more hands than he could reasonably fend off, all trying to remove his clothes, and finally he gave a loud shout and pulled away, feeling like a besieged quarterback as he dragged his flesh out of the grasping hands of the women.

When he was a few feet from the edge of the water, panting hard but still clothed, John said, “Alright. I get the point,” and held up one hand to indicate that he needed a moment of rest. In truth, his ribs did ache, between the walk to the stream and the struggle a moment ago, but that was not why he had asked for the “time-out.” No, he mostly wanted to consider his options.

So, with the women giving him big-eyed stares and breaking out into sporadic fits of giggles, John thought about running away. Of course, he knew that if he returned to the village, he’d only be dragged back here, probably with an escort of the likes of Larry, Curly, and Moe. He didn’t want to think about what they’d have to say. 

And then there was the fact that this was probably all a part of the welcoming ritual about which Leg had offered only obscure warnings.

With a sigh, John reached down to untie the laces that held his leggings in place, toeing his boots off at the same time. Just before shucking his pants—beneath which, he wore nothing, for nothing is what he’d been given to wear—he paused to give a significant look at the one he called “Round-cheeks,” who was easily the youngest by at least a decade, if John’s guesses were in any way accurate.

He said to Woman, “Look, maybe you could turn around,” making what he hoped was the universal sign for a 180 degree spin. Woman just shook her head firmly and crossed her arms over her chest.

So John removed the leggings, feeling the gooseflesh rise immediately on his exposed skin. The tail of his shirt came down over his most private areas, but it was a near thing, and he could feel it brushing against his thighs just at the point at which they met his buttocks.

Another word from Woman, and John was raising the hem of that shirt up and carefully over his torso, feeling the muscles protest the motion.

_Man, am I out of shape_ , he thought, an unfortunate consideration given his nakedness just then.

He tossed the shirt aside, onto the pants, which he’d laid on a boulder well out of the way of the water. The gesture exposed the long line of his torso under his right arm, and he regretted it instantly when he heard the gasps of one or two of the assembled group.

The ragged scar ran from just beneath his armpit to just above his waist. The worst of it was hidden by the tightly wound bandages, which John sincerely hoped that Woman would allow him to continue wearing. They were the only thing keeping his rib securely in place, and he didn’t relish the thought of having it reset. 

The healer said something then, but not to John, for he looked up to see her admonishing glare, and he caught concurrent guilty glances askance by some of the other women, “Round-cheeks” included.

He was glad that no one was able to ask him, for he really didn’t want to talk about it, and he wasn’t sure he could explain the clusterfuck that was Afghanistan to these nice ladies. At least, not without a Blackhawk, four Marines, and a whole lot of whiskey.

Woman indicated that John should enter the water, and he did so with the kind of painful deliberation of a condemned man approaching the gallows. His feet were immediately numb, and the progression of the water up his calves caused his testicles to shrivel and retreat upward into the scant heat of his naked body. He manfully resisted the whimper that wanted to leave him, settling for a completely justifiable gasp in its place.

When he was to mid-thigh in the icy stream, at its center and its deepest point here, Woman gave him the sign to halt and then motioned that John should shower the water over his head. 

His look might have been baleful, for she responded to it with a sharp word that made a few of the younger women gasp themselves.

John did as he was instructed, however, wanting the whole ordeal over with as soon as possible. He was afraid as it was that he might never get his balls to come out of hiding. The sheets of icy water sluiced over him, robbing him of breath and soaking uncomfortably through the cloth bandages, making him into a kind of partial mummy. 

Blinking water out of his eyes and rubbing his wet hair as best he could, John was startled by a motion behind the gathered women, and he focused his eyes to discover its source. Fearing the worst, he started to wade toward the shore and his clothes, disregarding Woman’s sharp words that clearly indicated he was not done in the water.

But then the motion resolved itself into the figure of Falling Stone, who was half-hidden behind a big tree perhaps thirty feet from the edge of the brook. He was watching John with an expression that made John flush, and despite the searing cold of the water, he felt heat rush through him. He didn’t want to consider that his first reaction to recognizing the heat in Stone’s gaze was not disgust or discomfort but a kind of corresponding desire to be seen.

John lowered his eyes, overcome of a sudden with the true nature of his situation. He was naked before a group of strangers, utterly vulnerable to theirs—to _his_ —eyes, and unable to speak his words to any who could know and understand him except Crooked Leg, who was himself an uncomfortable mystery. Worse, he felt as though he didn’t know himself, for he had never expected that of all the reactions he might have had to the bare hunger in another man’s eyes, John would feel…proud, maybe, and wanted.

Shaking his head, John threw more cold water over himself, trying to drive away the alien feelings that had now taken up residence in the region of his belly. But the water only made him feel his nakedness, and he longed to find shelter in his stranger’s clothes, to retreat to the Healing Hut and be left alone.

Instead, when he was finally allowed to wade ashore, he was directed to sit—naked—on a rock while the women painted him with colorful clays that they dipped expertly from petite pottery jars, which they had obviously had hidden away in their dresses. 

Soon, John was a veritable palette of paints, loops and swirls and whorls of color dancing a pattern across his neck, arms, chest, back, and down his legs, even onto the tops of his long feet. When they were satisfied with their work, the women went to the stream to wash their hands clean, while Woman wordlessly handed John a shirt, not the other that he had worn, but one made of soft, supple hide, obviously worked for hours by loving hands. It was beautifully beaded with bones and the dyed shafts of bird feathers, and as he drew it down over his head, its fringe rattled.

Next, she gave him a pair of fringed pants, looser than the leggings he wore and beaded like the shirt in wild patterns of color. Finally, she gave him a pair of beaded boots with bells, hand-wrought from smelted metal, he could see, and which jingled merrily as he pulled them on.

All through the ritual painting and dressing, John had studiously avoided looking for Falling Stone’s figure at the edge of his vision, but now he could not help but look. He was disappointed—and then angry with himself for that disappointment—to find that Stone was gone. 

The absurd idea that the man had not wanted to see John in his ceremonial dress until it was time for the ritual crossed John’s tumbling thoughts, and he gave himself a hard mental shake.

When they were satisfied with his attire, the women gathered up John’s other clothes and handed them to him, first humming under their collective breath the melody to John’s song and then singing it wordlessly, encouraging him to join in. With their words on his tongue, John followed the women, feeling strangely outside himself and yet somehow a part of this oddly harmonious group as they wended their way back to the village and the promise of the festivities that were to take place there that very night.

Chapter Eight

John had spent what was left of the afternoon resting in the Healing Hut. He had tried to go out to find Crooked Leg and see if he couldn’t pry more information out of him about what the night held in store for John, but every time he’d gotten to the door, a stern-faced matron would appear, as if by magic, and indicate that he must remain inside. 

He soon learned that the word “na-a-ho” meant, “Stay,” or something similar, but beyond that, he got nothing out of them. He listened for a long time to the rise and fall of voices in the village. Now and again, someone would cry out excitedly and someone else would answer. Sometimes, a group of voices seemed to swell in strength just beyond the hut’s door, but soon enough, they would fade again, and it left John wondering what he would find when he was finally allowed to leave.

Trapped for the rest of the afternoon, John spent his time lying on his bed, staring at the rough-hewn beams of the hut’s ceiling, and trying really hard not to think about Atlantis.

He first didn’t think about whether or not Elizabeth had been forced by Caldwell to call off the search he was sure had been mounted to find him. It had been twelve days, by his reckoning, since he’d been captured.

He definitely never gave a passing thought to who had been chosen to replace him on the team.

And it never even occurred to him how Ronon would get along with that person.

In fact, so thoroughly was he ignoring Atlantis, that when the flap to the hut was finally thrown back to reveal Crooked Leg’s bent figure, John most decidedly did not have to erase the split-second image of someone else—someone considerably more annoying, a whole lot louder, and infinitely more hypochondriacal than Leg—standing in the hut’s door.

Leg said, “Let’s go,” and John levered himself off of the bed, fringe and bells making a percussive rattle as he walked.

He emerged slowly from the flap, unsure of what to expect and wanting time to be prepared, but there was no one waiting outside to douse him with water or set him on fire, so he fell in beside Leg and asked, “So, what should I expect tonight?”

Leg only chortled and shrugged, giving Ronon a run for his money in the enigmatic department.

John gritted his teeth. 

Ahead, John could see the glow of a fire from around the gentle bend of the main street of the village, and as they were walking in that direction, he figured that the main event must be there. He really hoped that there wasn’t another gauntlet—maybe made up of the men of the tribe and involving knives. 

_Maybe we’ll just eat a lot of squeasel and get drunk on whatever intoxicant they have around here_ , John hoped, feeling his stomach flip with nervousness. He hated being the center of attention.

Rodney’s opinion to the contrary, John had never much appreciated being the life of a party; he preferred to stalk the outskirts of a party crowd, observing and cataloguing. Oh, he’d had his younger and wilder days, had spent his fair share of time getting wasted and forgetting the names of his partners du nuit. 

But all that had ended his first year in flight training, when a guy he knew—not a buddy, just someone he knew by face and name, someone he’d say “Hey” to at muster in the mornings—hung over on illegal hooch during morning maneuvers threw up in his flight helmet, aspirated his own vomit, panicked, and before he could clear his breathing, crashed the T-38 he was flying into the ground at 600mph. 

There wasn’t enough of him—or his unfortunate flight instructor, a man who John had liked and respected, and whose voice over the comm., shouting desperate instructions and then withering curses as the instructor failsafes failed to save them, was something John would sometimes hear at the tail end of an otherwise forgotten nightmare—to bury. From shrieking alive to bloody vapor in seconds.

Yeah, John’s appetites—and attitudes—had shifted after that. 

But even more than being out of control in public, John hated surprises in general. Surprises always came in ugly packages, like, “Hey, if you kill the Keeper, all of the fucking Wraith will awaken,” or “Wow, blue, scaly flesh, how exciting!”

No, John wasn’t one for attention or surprises, and he had the distinct impression that he was about to have more of both than he’d ever imagined, even from the Pegasus Galaxy.

Sucking in a deep breath, squaring his shoulders, and clenching his jaw, John hastened his pace as Leg did, sensing that they were almost to the point of no return.

But when they rounded the bend and came to a wide clearing, ringed with tall trees, whose bare branches trembled in the light of the leaping flames below, no one paid them any real mind. A ring of warriors, stripped to their leggings and gleaming with oil or sweat in the firelight, danced to a complicated rhythm. There were no drums or flutes, no voices raised in song, not even any clapping. Only the adornments on the leggings kept the beat of the dancers. The People stood silent and watched the intricate dance.

As they neared the fire, John could see that one of the dancers was Falling Stone, and his stomach flipped again and then threatened to crawl up his throat. He took a steadying breath and tried not to stare.

It was hard, though. Stone was clearly the most graceful of a very rhythmic group, his powerful legs flexing, fringe and bells casting their distinct sound into the night. His feet, encased in gorgeous beadwork boots, flashed against the earth—toe and heel, heel, leap and land, twirl—every move perfectly in synch with the others who danced around him, though John could not say that for certain, so enrapt was he by Stone’s beautiful movements. 

He tried to keep his eyes on Stone’s feet, but he couldn’t help that they traveled up those long legs, encased in supple, living leather, to the man’s gleaming chest, burnished to bronze in the firelight, across his wide shoulders and down his long-sinewed arms, which flexed with every change in the beat, on to his expressive hands, with their curling fingers that seemed to speak their own language, one that John suspected he knew.

When his eyes finally lit on Stone’s face, it was to find the man returning John’s stare with frank admiration. The dance had ended, and John had not even noticed.

Suddenly, a shout went up from the waiting crowd, and Leg shoved John gently toward Falling Stone, who had stepped out of the circle toward John.

They met in a cool circle cast in the shadow of a hundred bodies gathered around them. Except for the popping of the enormous fire, there were no sounds.

Stone gave John a nod as though John had asked an especially wise question. Then, he raised his hand and touched John’s forehead, leaving there a mark, which John only now noticed must have come from the tiny pot of coloring, like the ones the women had used earlier, that Stone gripped loosely in his other hand.

Stone’s eyes never left John’s as he drew one symbol after another on his captive’s face, first on the forehead, then each cheek, down his nose, and then to his chin. John forgot that they weren’t alone, forgot to breathe in the long moments when Stone’s hands seared into his flesh the marks of ownership, forgot—almost— who he was.

The last terrified him, shook him from the momentary fantasy that he belonged beneath Stone’s strong hands.

And John wanted to hate this. He wanted to run as far and as fast as he could, to fly from this place and never look back. He wanted the brilliant light to envelop him, to beam him aboard the Daedalus, where he could wash away the paint and forget the man who had marked him with it.

Of course, he couldn’t have what he wanted. Either way.

At least, that’s what he’d been taught, what had been drummed into him by classmates at base schools and cadets at the academy and guys he flew into death with but could never talk to about anything that really mattered. It’s what he’d thrust into every woman under him, every girl that gazed with love into his lying eyes.

Stone’s eyes didn’t lie. It was clear from the man’s direct look just what he wanted of John. John wondered if he was being given a choice, and then hated himself for the fleeting thought that it would be better if he wasn’t. At least then he wouldn’t have to make excuses later on, if— _when_ —he was rescued.

Still without breaking eye contact, Falling Stone spoke, and though John only recognized the word “Oni,” which he was coming to understand meant “captive,” he knew by Stone’s tone that ritual was being woven, words of magic called down upon his bewildered form.

A voice at his back startled John, and he began to turn toward it, only to feel the heat of Stone’s hand on his neck, stopping him.

Crooked Leg said, “Falling Stone has called upon the tribe to tell if there are any who will not have you as a member. He has said that you are strong and brave, that you will fight for us and die for us with dignity, according to the Ancestors and the way of things since time began. He has claimed you for his kin, to be his sister’s keeper until such time as you or she decides otherwise. But this cannot be done without your approval. You are not a slave to be bartered but a man who must choose under whose roof you will live. Do you accept Falling Stone’s offer of shelter and kinship?”

John, staggered, could not immediately respond, and when he did, it was to ask, “Am I to be married?” His throat was so tight, he wasn’t sure the words could crawl out the narrow space that remained, but Leg answered, “No. You are obligated only to keep her in clothes and food and to guard and guide her daughter.”

“Daughter?” John asked, unsure he’d heard right.

“Yes. Little Bird has an infant girl, too young to have her First Name. Bird calls her Summer.”

“What happened to her father?” John thought it was a pertinent question, but by Leg’s impatient chuff, he guessed that the old man thought it a foolish one.

“Will you accept Falling Stone’s offer and be welcomed into the Clan of the Great Bird?”

John didn’t think he had a choice. He knew only a few of The People well, and of all of them, he trusted Falling Stone the most, though why that should be he could not say.

_Maybe because you’re thinking with your dick_ , an internal voice snarled smartly. 

John silenced it by saying, “A-ho” and nodding at Falling Stone, though he could no longer quite meet the taller man’s eyes.

Leg nudged him. “You need to make a speech of thanksgiving. Make it good. They have to take you in. They don’t have to like you.”

_Great_ , John thought. _Just great_. 

John was no orator, never had been. Even when he really knew his stuff, he stumbled over his words, seeking and failing to find the right way to express himself. Most of the time, his mumbling was taken as a sign of stupidity, which worked in his favor. He counted on the idea that people would underestimate his intelligence, a fact that had worked to his advantage for years in the military, where more got done illicitly than through direct channels. John rarely got blamed for anything when the shit hit the fan because even people who should have known better—people, for example, who had access to his personnel files and the test scores therein—assumed that there was no way he could have pulled it all off.

And women were forever assuming that his reticence was the sign of some deep, dark personal tragedy that needed only their particular brand of understanding to reveal and then heal.

Now, and with a luck that even Murphy would pity, John found himself in the unenviable position of having to speak for his life—or at least, in this case, the quality of it. If he screwed up, he might alienate his new “family,” and he had a feeling that these were the kind of people who could hold a grudge—or at least a carpet-beater, and with memorable and stinging precision.

So, casting a prayer up to whatever god got reception in the Pegasus Galaxy, John began, hoping that Leg would make his words sound better than they actually were.

“Uh…” he began brilliantly. “I know that I am a stranger here, so none of you really know me.” _Duh, hence **stranger**_ , John thought to himself. “And you have no reason to think that I can help you. But I can. At least, I think I can. No, no, I definitely can.” 

He swore he heard Leg’s wheezing laugh from behind him, where his translator was apparently struggling to do the job.

“I, uh…Look, I suck at speeches, okay? Really, ask me to hunt an a-u-mak—whatever the hell that is—or, you know, um…shoot someone, and, well, I’m your man. But speeches just aren’t my strong suit. In fact, I don’t have a lot of specialized skills outside of flying and, well, unless your airport is at your other village, I’m guessing that piloting isn’t a job in high demand around here. So, tell you what…I won’t lie to you if I can help it, and I’ll always do my part to help out. I’ll make sure that Little Bird and her baby are well kept. And I’ll fight by your side if something happens that makes it necessary. I won’t eat too much, talk too loud, or drink your good booze. And I won’t make eyes at your daughters, either. Mostly, I’ll keep to myself and do what I’m told. I hope that that’s okay with all of you. Because, you know, you all seem like nice folks, and I’d like a chance to get to know you better.”

John braved a look at Falling Stone to see what the man’s reaction to his words might be, but Stone was wearing that neutral expression John was coming to dread.

Leg’s words finished seconds after John had finished speaking, and a silence grew then, attenuating into the longest minute of John’s life. The tension grew until he thought that the stars were being pulled from their orbit by the gravity of the moment.

And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was broken by a single, high voice saying simply, “A-ho.”

Then a torrent of voices joined in and a drum was struck and song broke out, and then Falling Stone’s hand was on John’s arm, pulling him toward the circle around the fire, and he was being taught a simple step, which he took up with a mixture of relief and fear.

So much had happened in such a short time that he wasn’t sure where he’d been left. Surely, he hadn’t misunderstood Falling Stone’s dark gaze, nor the hunger he’d seen there earlier in the day, when John had been baptized in the brook.

But now, the man was dancing before him, gaze hooded, and John could not tell what he was thinking. And he’d been given to care for Stone’s sister, Little Bird, a woman John could not even pick out from the many he had met today.

Was she that tall, sad-looking girl standing to one side of the women singers? Or the wide-faced one whose open eyes looked like twin flames in the firelight? John shook off the question of who the girl was. He’d find out soon enough, and in the meantime, he had dancing to do.

John wasn’t especially rhythmic, but the music was so percussive that it was hard to lose the beat, and the heat of the fire felt good on his skin. His ribs ached a little with the jarring, and he knew he’d soon have to sit the dancing out if he hoped to be in decent shape for tomorrow’s raid, whatever that was going to be.

The tempo of the song shifted a little just before it ended, and then the men cleared the “floor” and the women took their place, spinning and crouching and leaping so fast that John’s breath quickened in sympathy.

A hand at his elbow drew his eyes up to Falling Stone’s own and then to the woman beside him.

Stone said her name, “Aw-ton-a-me,” and John wondered which part of that was “little” and which part “bird.” She was almost as tall as John, with high cheekbones and wide, slanted eyes. Her neck was long and graceful, her whole body slender, slim in a way that few of the women here were, he thought. She was not smiling, and John wondered if she were as nervous as he.

Then Crooked Leg said, “Falling Stone wants you to meet Tall Woman, his wife.”

And before John could process the import of those words, Tall Woman was assaulted by a tumbling pack of children, out from which came two children, a boy and a girl. At the sight of the giggling pair, her face transformed from the rather severe expression with which she had greeted him, and suddenly John saw that she was beautiful. 

She said something low to Falling Stone, and he smiled and responded. John felt something close inside of him.

Leg said, “The boy is Winter Sun, the girl Calls-at-Dark.”

John looked at the boy, who must have been about eight years old, and found in his face his father’s strong jaw and his mother’s sharp cheekbones and long nose. As he stared, the boy stuck his chest out and stomped up to him, saying something sternly in a faux-deep voice.

Calls-at-Dark dissolved into a fit of giggling and hid behind her mother’s skirts.

“He wants you to know that his father is the man of the house and he, Winter Sun, is second. You can be third, but only if you bring in food for the family.” Leg’s voice was hoarse with suppressed laughter.

John looked solemnly at the little boy and said, “A-ho,” to acknowledge his words. Apparently satisfied, Winter Sun returned to his father’s side. Falling Stone rested his broad hand on his son’s dark head.

Turning his attention to the shy little girl, John said, “Hello, Calls-at-Dark,” and to his surprise, she peeked out long enough to say, “’ello, Shay-a-par” before once more hiding her face. From the little glimpse he’d seen, he could tell that she was going to be a real beauty when she was grown. She had her father’s beautiful eyes and wide smile, and there was something in her eyes, a brightness, that suggested that she was constantly thinking and always aware.

John sighed inwardly, trying to imagine what his life was about to become. He looked once more at Stone, who was obviously making a careful assessment of John’s reaction to the family into which he’d just been welcomed.

“I am very pleased to meet you, Tall Woman. And your children. They obviously take after their mother in the looks department.”

Never let it be said that John Sheppard couldn’t be charming when push came to shove. Of course, he didn’t really know if his trite sentiments would translate, but he also didn’t much care. He was trying to swallow back a growing bitterness that tasted a lot like betrayal, and he wanted more than anything to be away from these people—all of them—for at least as long as it would take to put away the hurt. 

After all, he’d only just accepted that he might have something he’d always wanted but had never been allowed, and it had already been taken from him. He thought he had the right to be a little pissed, especially considering that he was apparently supposed to sleep under the same roof as Falling Stone, his wife, and their two lovely children.

John thought he might be sick. Or kill someone. Whichever came first.

But his escape wasn’t to be, for even as Tall Woman and the children turned to go, another woman came up to take her place by Falling Stone’s side. John was surprised to recognize the girl he’d called “Round-cheeks,” and even as he started to shake his head, Leg was saying in his ear, “This is Little Bird, your clan sister.”

“But she can’t be more than sixteen!” John protested, not caring that his raised voice caused many heads to turn. His angry eyes met Stone’s, and the man’s expression hardened.

_Oh, he doesn’t like being told no,_ John thought. _Well, that’s too damned bad. I’m not shacking up with a teenager. Period._

“She is of age in our tribe, Sheppard. She was married two years ago to He Who Waits and Watches, and she has already borne a child. She is considered a very eligible mate and will likely remarry soon. You are not expected to bed her; in fact, you may not. She is your sister-kin by tribal law. You are only required to care for her and her child.”

There were several things that John wanted to ask about what Leg had just told him. He was heartily sick of learning important things only after he’d ceased to have a choice in how those things worked to his advantage or disadvantage. But Leg had moved away, leaving John standing awkwardly before Falling Stone and his sister, who was staring boldly at John, much the way she had done when he was naked in the brook.

He gave her a little smile, acknowledging her own playful grin, and was relieved to see that she was teasing him and not flirting.

“Hi,” he said simply, not sure what else to say. 

She laughed a little, like a girl, and then turned away, skipping lightly back to a gaggle of young women who were giggling and darting glances at John.

That left him standing alone with Falling Stone, a situation he remedied immediately by turning his back on the taller man and walking away. He had to find some peace and quiet, if only for a moment, or he was afraid of what he might do.

There weren’t many times in John’s life when he’d been close to losing control, at least not since he’d gained it to begin with, in his early days at the Academy. But the series of turns his life had just taken had left him more than simply shaken; he was utterly uncertain what was expected of him now, and he wished that someone who spoke his language would say: “John, you need to do X, Y, and Z. Nothing else is expected of you.”

He choked back a nasty laugh when it occurred to him that he’d spent most of his military career resisting just that kind of disciplined direction from an external source, and now all he wanted was for someone to say, “Jump” so that he could answer, “How high?”

The crunch of fresh snow underfoot told John that he’d wandered far beyond the edge of the village, and he looked up to find that he was standing at the top of a little rise ringed in trees. Above him, the stars cut points of light in the black velvet of a perfect winter’s sky, and he ghosted out a breath to see them blur as he considered the real source of his anger.

Had he mistaken Stone’s intentions? Had the man been merely polite? Hell, it was an alien culture. Maybe John had just gotten the signals wrong. 

_Maybe you saw what you wanted to see_ , the snarky voice said. And John was reluctantly inclined to agree. He was lost and alone among alien people; he’d been captured, injured, and suffered from fever, never mind the hallucinogenic smoke. He was allowed a little confusion, he supposed, and the long-dormant desire for another man was bound to rear its neglected head in a place where everything John knew and understood about himself was being called into question.

He was sure that Heightmeyer even had some fancy name for it. Maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome, John considered.

And then he laughed, his breath like dragon’s smoke in the frigid air. 

He couldn’t let himself off that easily, mostly because he knew better. He had wanted Falling Stone for many reasons, but only one of them was because the man had control over him. John had entertained many fantasies about superior officers over the years, after all. But he’d never given into them, even when they had been likely to be reciprocated.

No. What he’d wanted from Stone had been simplified by circumstances—alien planet, willing partner, no chance of getting caught. But his desires hadn’t been caused by his captivity.

A footstep in the snow behind him broke his reverie, had him reaching for a gun long gone.

Falling Stone, still bare-chested and breathing streams out into the night air, stood behind John, perhaps six paces away, and stared at John with a speaking look.

John shook his head, let out another nasty laugh. “No,” he said simply in Stone’s own tongue.

Stone took two steps forward.

John stood his ground and said, “No” again, this time in English.

Stone closed the space between them, took John’s head in his big hands, and drew his mouth up for a kiss that drove the breath from John’s lungs.

John might have fought, except the slick slide of Stone’s tongue on his own made him moan aloud, and the sound broke the silence of the starlit night and was answered by Stone’s deep rumble.

The kiss deepened, and Stone drew John toward him until they were touching, until John’s knee was between Stone’s slightly spread legs and John could feel him hard against his thigh. John shifted just enough to brush that bulge in the leather, and Stone gasped into his mouth and let go, backing up so suddenly that John teetered on the very edge of balance for a moment before righting himself.

It was Stone’s turn to say, “No.”

John gave him a long look, waiting for some explanation. He could see Stone struggling to marshal his breath, to stop the shuddering waves of want that coursed through him. He watched as the broad chest rose and fell, traced his eyes quite deliberately down the sculpted belly to the telltale sign of Stone’s desire.

When he once more returned his eyes to Stone’s, the man’s look was shuttered, carefully closed.

John took a step toward the taller man, and Stone broke, spinning in the snow and sprinting off down the hill, back toward the village and the safety of the fire.

John laughed again, and if there was something of the hysterical about it, he was to be forgiven.

_I am so fucked._

Chapter Nine

The walk back to the village took a lot longer than the walk out had, mostly because John was actually anxious to get back. He told himself that it wasn’t because he wanted to see Stone again, to try to figure out what the man’s deal was. Himself told John to pull the other one.

When John arrived at the fire, it occurred to him just how long he’d been gone. The huge pyramid of neatly stacked logs had burned down to a few wet butt-ends, hatchet marks still evident in the weeping wood. The embers of the fire still glowed white with heat, though, and John was warmed just by standing near. No one was dancing; there were couples here and there on benches made from split logs and laid so that they rocked in scooped-out cradles. 

It appeared from the amount of kissing going on that these were the courting benches, just far enough from the fire to be private, but close enough to be kept an eye on by the stern-faced matrons that were gathered around the smooth-topped stump of an enormous tree that had once stood in clearing where the village bonfire now burned. There were skins of water, John thought, and some of another substance, one that made the men wince and flash their teeth as they drank. He avoided those, sniffing carefully at the communal mouths of the skins until he found one that he was almost certain was water. This he drank gratefully. As he lowered the skin, he saw a smudge of red paint around its mouth, and that’s when it occurred to him that he might have marked Stone just as the native had marked him.

He glanced furtively at the women standing around the table, but they had eyes only for the necking couples, and none noticed that John’s face paint was smudged. He turned his back to them and dabbed at his lips as best he could, coming away with brilliant vermilion from his chin and more red from his nose.

Once he was certain he was marginally presentable, he searched the scattered groupings for a familiar face, and was somewhat dismayed to discover Little Bird at the very edge of the firelight casting him discreet glances in the apparent hope that he would notice her.

Sighing inwardly, John walked over to the girl, donning a middleweight charming smile— _wouldn’t do to dazzle her into a false impression_ , he thought—and hiding behind it a host of misgivings, not the least of which was what he would say to her.

He hadn’t felt this helpless since his first date with Pamela LeGrange in the seventh grade. As he recalled, Pam had looked at him about like Little Bird was staring at him now, part deer-in-headlights, part pride that she was being paid some attention.

Given his extremely limited lexicon, John figured it was going to be a short conversation, but Little Bird surprised him.

“How a-are you?” she asked. The vowels were a little round, and she nearly swallowed the W altogether, but John understood her and he let his surprised pleasure show on his face. It was nice to hear a pleasantry in his own language, and her voice was pleasing, low and melodious.

_Oh, just dandy_ , John thought. He guessed that Little Bird hadn’t gotten to colloquialisms and the finer points of verbal irony, however, so to her he simply said, “I’m fine.”

It was a lie, of course, but then, he had had a lot of practice lying to women, and that particular pairing of words was among his most-used lines.

She smiled, nodded nervously, darted her eyes away toward the necking couples and then, as though realizing what she’d done, giggled a little and actually scuffed one booted toe in the dirt. It was obvious that the question had been the sum total of her repertoire.

“How are you?” he asked her, wondering if she’d learned an answer by heart, if someone had drilled her on this little exchange the way that Falling Stone and Curly had drilled John on his ritual song.

“Good,” she managed, smiling a little at the way the strange word sounded, or maybe at John’s little laugh of approval.

“Good,” he said right back, affirming her accuracy. 

Little Bird beamed.

_Well,_ he thought, _if we can keep to the Emily Post Book of Captivity Etiquette, we should be fine._

Just then, a shadow between them and the fire drew John’s attention, and he saw Falling Stone approaching. The tall man avoided John’s eyes, fixing them instead on his sister, to whom he spoke now with gentle sternness.

The light left her eyes and her smile faded, and John wondered if she were being chastised for flirting with him. He felt absurdly like defending her honor and then realized he was borrowing trouble. For all he knew, she could be getting into trouble for leaving the cook-fire burning.

Little Bird turned to John, said, “O-wah-nay,” which John knew meant “Goodbye” and “Farewell” and “Go with God” and several other things—much like the Hawaiian “Aloha,” he had guessed—and turned away, walking back toward the shadowed and now silent village.

Falling Stone touched John’s elbow and said something aloud, publicly, gesturing for John to walk beside him toward the village, too.

John complied, more for lack of alternatives than because he necessarily wanted to spend time in awkward silence with the enigmatic warrior. Ronon had been easier to read, John reflected, sparing a peripheral glance at the man beside him.

No paint on his face, John noticed, which meant that Stone had had the sense to slow down and wipe it away before returning to his wife and kids.

John shuddered suddenly, overcome with the recognition that _he_ was the other man. It was a premature conclusion, of course, since John knew nothing about the sexual mores of The People of the Lake and the Plain. For all he knew, bisexuality was the norm and husbands were polygamous. Somehow, however, he doubted it. 

He remembered, too, what Leg had said, about John being a part now of the Clan of the Great Bird and therefore unable to marry Little Bird. He wanted to ask Falling Stone if the passionate clinch that they’d shared on the hillside constituted incest for the native man, but he didn’t know any of those words, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer, anyway.

There were benefits to not speaking the language, John decided.

They had reached a large lodge set slightly apart from the others, its back facing the narrow grove of tall evergreens that bordered one side of the rectangular village, not far from the charred remains of the grain huts. Stone took John’s elbow in a proprietary grip and herded him into the darkness behind the lodge. There, in the black umbrage cast by the pine trees, Stone leaned down to kiss John again.

John stiff-armed Stone into three stumbling backward steps and shook his head. 

“No,” he whispered, hearing it carry in the still, cold air of the winter’s night.

It was risky as hell, first of all, reminding John not a little of his very first boy kiss, between a full dumpster and the back wall of the PX at Ellsworth, sweltering in the South Dakota August heat, suffocated by the stench of rotting garbage, and completely terrified that Scotty Hauptmann was grinding his zipper into his crotch with one crooked knee while laying a decidedly unchaste kiss on John’s astonished mouth.

Of course, John was not nearly so astonished now, but he was still concerned about getting caught. 

“Are you nuts?” he asked, hoping the tone would translate, even if the words did not. “You don’t want to kiss me on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere, but it’s okay to have your way with me against the back wall of your own lodge? What the hell is with you, anyway?”

From the tightening of Stone’s jaw, visible even in the deep shadow of the overhanging boughs, the native man understood enough. He clenched his fists and stalked toward John, and John shifted his weight enough to protect his middle. He’d be damned if he’d risk the rib after it was finally starting to heal a little. 

But Stone didn’t hit him. He raised one fist and brushed it against John’s cheek, bringing away some of the paint that still clung there, despite all the abuse it had taken that evening. With a slow, almost wicked deliberation, Stone licked the paint from his fingers, one knuckle at a time, a feral grin stretching his face into a mockery of the one John thought he knew.

When he was finished, he repeated the whole show with John’s other cheek.

Then he leaned in, his face close to John’s, and John could smell the grease the dancers had used to keep warm in the cold air; it smelled like pine and green woods, and John couldn’t help the frisson of need that needled through him from his heart to his groin at the scent.

Falling Stone’s lips brushed John’s outer ear as he rumbled something that needed no real translation, for it was filthy and promising and regretful and a refrain he was familiar with from bathrooms at bars out by the commercial airport. It said, “Sorry we can’t do more. I’d like to swallow you whole.”

John ducked out from under Stone’s shadow, not caring if it looked like a retreat. He couldn’t take much more of the big man’s presence.

Which was when, of course, Stone indicated that John should follow him around the lodge once more, this time leading him through the front door, with an admonishing finger that was apparently also universal, saying “Shhhhhhhh.”

He pointed to a pallet barely visible in the banked glow of the sunken hearth at the center of the lodge, which threw off enough heat to keep the lodge warm. John could see the bundled figure of Little Bird nearby, her pallet pushed inward toward the fire, as though she liked the heat. Beside her, in a low, hand-carved cradle, was another well-wrapped bundle, who, he presumed, was the infant Summer. John’s own bed was furthest from the fire, back against the rear wall of the lodge, to the right of the door as he entered. It was piled with furs, and he could see another mattress peeking from beneath them. 

And just like that, he was struck with weariness. Toeing off his boots, he shucked his shirt next and then looked around for something softer than the leggings, whose beadwork would worry his skin in the night, he was sure. He found that atop the furs was a night shirt like he’d worn those first few days in the Healing Hut. He sighed into it, unlaced the leggings, slid them off, and shimmied into bed.

He never once looked over to see Falling Stone, who he presumed slept with Tall Woman on the opposite side of the lodge, so he did not know that Stone watched him all the while with a slight smile spread on his lips, and he did not see Stone turn reluctantly toward his own bed, hidden in the shadows well beyond where his wife and children slept soundly, dreaming of spring.

If spring indeed is what they dreamt of, they were sorely disappointed the next morning, when they awakened to find the world robbed of all warmth. The sky was a heavy, leaden grey, lowering, and had John not known better, he might have suspected that it was actually going to fall.

He’d been awoken early by movement in the lodge. Like many military men he knew, John could not sleep if someone else was nearby moving about, unless he were gravely injured or seriously ill. So he rose with Little Bird, and they had a moment of embarrassed tiptoeing around who would first use the privy, which was actually built out from the back wall of the lodge and protected by a heavy flap of its own, a kind of privacy John appreciated.

Being a gentleman, John let Bird go first and then climbed hastily into his workaday leggings—he had a feeling that the beaded ones were only for special occasions. In shift and pants, wearing only the thin slipper-like boots he’d been given in the Healing Hut, and which he’d found beneath his pallet when he awoke, he snuck out around the back of the lodge to piss against a tree. He was robbed of all color himself by the time he returned, shivering and with chattering teeth, to find Little Bird hiding a grin as she built up the fire, a task he took over himself, just to be useful.

Soon, there was a stirring from Stone’s side of the hut, and John saw that the children were awake and playing some kind of silent game of hand signals that reminded him not a little of Rock-Paper-Scissors. It gave him a pang of homesickness that he quickly squelched as Tall Woman emerged from the privy. Stone, he saw, was already out.

Tall Woman took over the preparation of the morning meal as Little Bird went about further ablutions and breastfeeding, an activity she took no especial care to hide from John, who decided that he’d better get over the embarrassment thing in a hurry, given the relatively close quarters of his new home. 

John busied himself straightening his pallet and putting away his scant few possessions in a beautifully carved chest he found at the foot of his bed. The lid was decorated with several images, chief of which was a large bear-like creature in the center, surrounded above by a series of birds, carved in successive sizes, from tiny sparrows to enormous raptors. Below the central figure were stylized waves, in which swam fish that reminded John of salmon and the river trout his father had taught him to fish for when he was just a boy. The box was long and shallow, designed, he discovered, to slide neatly under the low pallets, and as he pulled the bedcovers down over the edge, lining them up evenly with the mattress edge, he caught Tall Woman giving him an assessing look.

He was never gladder of having learned to pass morning inspection than when Tall Woman gave him a little nod and the minutest of smiles before turning back to her work.

Little Bird had gotten the children up and was washing their faces, while Winter Sun protested mightily—some things were universal, John was amused to note—and Calls-at-Dark shot John bashful glances from behind the cover of Bird’s skirt.

Soon enough, Tall Woman had called them to gather around the fire, where a scattering of furs made up the only furniture. John waited until Little Bird sat, watching her curl with enviable limberness into the familiar cross-legged position. The children followed suit, and then it was only Tall Woman, waiting, pan in hand, for John to be seated. He attempted “Indian-style” but lost his balance part way through the motion, listed to one side, and ended up with one leg cocked at the knee and the other bent beneath him rather uncomfortably.

Everyone laughed, though Tall Woman had the grace to turn away as she did so. When she looked at him once more, she said a few words in a patient, instructional voice, but John was unsure of her meaning. Finally, she handed him a wooden plate, polished to a mellow glow, and then flipped a flat, yellow cake onto it with an expert twist of her strong wrist.

John said, “Thank you,” in her language, and took a cue from Winter Sun, who was rolling the cake up into a tube, crepe-like, and dipping it into a shallow dish that he then passed on to his sister, who gave it to Little Bird, who offered it to John. Thinking it would be impolite to sniff it, he simply followed their collective example and dipped his own rolled cake, handing the bowl to Tall Woman with a smile.

Either Deer Woman Running had been a terrible cook or the food in the Healing Hut was made deliberately bland because the rich, warm flatcake melted on his tongue, spreading the thick, mild sweetness of the syrup through his mouth. He hummed appreciatively, reminding himself of Rodney on Meatloaf Night, and gave Tall Woman another smile, this one sticky with syrup.

They made quick work of their cakes. Little Bird passed him a dish, then, filled with dark, dried fruit, small and tough, but with a kind of tangy sweetness that appealed to him. He took a modest handful, mindful of the rationing that was doubtless soon to come, and ate the fruits one by one. He caught Winter Sun in the act of throwing one at his sister and couldn’t help the burst of laughter that startled Little Bird and made Tall Woman frown at the boy. Calls-at-Dark got her revenge, however, by licking the almost empty bowl clean of the scant remaining syrup left over from their flatcake feast.

John made as though to clean up the dishes, but a quick, sharp slap to his hand made it clear that it was work he was not allowed to do, so instead he washed his hands and face in the warm water left in the privy’s basin for that purpose, once again noting that there was no odor from what appeared to be a primitive sanitation set-up. Then he swapped the lightweight slippers for Waits’ hand-me-down boots and moved to change from shift to shirt. 

Half-naked, he felt a hand on his waist and found himself staring down into the wide eyes of Calls-at-Dark, who was offering him a clay jar, stoppered tight with a wooden cork. He took the jar and thanked her, to which she giggled, ducked her head shyly, and danced away. Opening the jar, John saw that there was a kind of salve or grease inside, and sniffing it, he recognized the odor he’d smelled on Falling Stone’s skin the night before.

He tried hard not to let the longing show on his face, but before he could turn away to hide his feelings, Tall Woman said something from across the lodge. He looked up to see her pantomiming a rubbing motion on her arms and across her torso. John realized he was meant to use the grease. 

He wondered if his scent offended them and that’s why they offered it. Shrugging, he dipped his fingers into it, surprised to find it wasn’t so much greasy as it was silky and smooth on his skin. He rubbed it over his arms and around the wrap that still snugged his ribs in place, reaching over his shoulders to do as much of his back as he could. 

He felt her before he saw her hand snake around from behind him to take the jar, and before he could say anything at all, Little Bird was rubbing the rest of his back with brisk efficiency, humming a tune under her breath, interrupting herself to comment on something to Tall Woman, whose answer was brusque but not unkind.

When she had finished, she moved away, and John put on his shirt. Then he stood there uncertainly, wondering what he was meant to do next. Tall Woman said, “Shay-ah-par,” and he looked at her to see that she was pointing at the door.

Never a man to be told a second time where women were concerned, he fled the lodge, finding the cold less oppressive now that he was fully clothed. As he walked, he noticed that his skin warmed, too, and that his exposed hands were not raw with chill as they had been before today. 

That’s what the grease is for, he surmised, smiling a little to have learned something useful.

He followed the sounds of axes to the edge of the village nearest the hill upon which he’d met Falling Stone the night before. In the light of day, he could see that it was perhaps three quarters of a mile from the village proper. The men were working in a narrow corridor of cleared trees, steadily laboring around three medium-sized hardwoods with hatchets and, he was surprised to see, saws. Falling Stone was there, head down over an already felled tree, adze flashing over the bark to strip it. 

John watched for a moment in admiration for the man’s obvious skill, and then he heard his name, and looked up to find Moe beckoning him toward one of the three trees, axe already extended, handle-first, in John’s direction. He took it with little trepidation, for this was another thing his father had taught him all those many years ago in the mountains north of their temporary home.

Every home had been temporary, but John’s father had made a habit of teaching his son something about the places where they lived, so that now John had some desert-craft, a fair knowledge of all kinds of fishing, and a definite knack with hatchets and saws.

He fell to the work with relish, forgetting for a few minutes his rib, which asserted itself after a particularly vigorous swing. He tried to keep the wince off of his face, not wanting to seem like he was making excuses, knowing that he needed to pull his weight or risk death.

But Moe saw the second time John swung wide, watched the axe hit its mark a little too slow to be truly effective, and took the handle from John without a word, shouldering him aside, though not with any special enmity. 

John stepped back to let the man work and heard his name from behind him. Two men he did not know at all were standing beside a second downed trunk, also a hardwood, John noticed, though without its leaves it was hard to be certain. This one had been fire-hollowed, and the men who had called him were holding concave tools shaped like shells, with the wide, sharp edges of which they were scraping away the soft coal.

As he approached, one of the men straddled the nearest end and bent to resume his work. The other offered John the tool, and John took his hint, straddling the far end of the trunk to face his partner and watch him work until John thought he could manage the same motions. Then he fell to work.

The morning passed quickly, though the sun surely didn’t show it, the grey clouds overhead only darkening as the day passed.

At one point, Crooked Leg wandered by to explain to John that the raiding party had been delayed until the weather cleared.

“Going to be snow, and a lot of it,” the old man observed, sniffing the air like a hound. “Can’t you smell it?”

John took in a breath just to be agreeable but was forced to admit that he hadn’t noticed anything especially about snow.

“Storm’s coming,” Leg added ominously as he walked away. 

John resumed his work, not wanting to seem like a slacker, though for all his worry, he noticed that many of the men took breaks now and again, pausing to lean against a tree and make smoke rings of their breath or pull a handful of fruit from the small leather satchels they wore at their waists, apparently for that purpose.

Finally tired of his work, John stood and stretched—carefully—feeling the slide and pop of his spine as he reached for the sky. A hand ghosted down his side from underarm to waist, and he startled and dropped his arms, spinning at the same time to see who had touched him.

Falling Stone stood nearby, a private smile on his lips. If the others thought anything of Stone’s familiarity with John’s body, none of them said anything or even looked askance. Neither did they fall harder to work as though hoping to avoid seeing anything untoward. Of course, maybe this was The Peoples’ equivalent of the football ass-pat, John considered, although he hadn’t noticed any of the others getting buddy-buddy.

“What do you want?” he asked, deciding to go for the direct approach. Not that it would do any good, but John got tired of awkward silence, and except for Leg, he couldn’t really talk to anyone without a lot of those.

Stone didn’t seem to know, for he simply continued to stare at John, his gaze not intrusive but definitely intent. John started to feel uneasy and then downright uncomfortable and decided to return to his work on the dugout.

He threw a leg over the log like he was used to it and bent to his task once more. When he looked up again, Stone was gone from the work-noisy clearing. John sighed out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding and slid further down the log toward his partner, who was making good progress toward meeting John in the middle.

Deciding to try something, John tapped his tool on the edge of the trunk to get the man’s attention and then pointed to himself, saying, “Sheppard.” He pointed then to the man across from him on the burnt log, and after a moment of puzzled silence, the man said, “Po-tow-ah-to-ni,” which, of course, might mean, “Kills with Scoopy-tool” for all John knew. Still, John repeated the name carefully with a tentative smile, receiving the like in return. 

Then he pointed to the dugout itself and raised his hands, palms up, as though to say, “I don’t know.”

The man said, “Wah-po-wah-nee,” and John repeated that, earning another encouraging smile. And so it went, on into afternoon, John pointing to objects and one or the other of his fellow workers answering him. The scoopy-tool, he learned, was called a to-po-ah, for example, and the most prevalent evergreen in the forest a hone-ah-wey-meh-ma. 

By mid-afternoon, John’s arms were weak with exhaustion and rubber-like in their response to even basic commands, and he was really, really hungry. So he stood up from his place beside the dugout, where he and Po-tow-ah-to-ni were doing detail work with adzes to smooth the exterior knots away, stretched again, and placed the adze on the edge of the log, which was fast becoming a canoe, he noted with some pride.

He pointed toward the village and said Little Bird’s name, and Po-tow-ah-to-ni nodded, making a shooing gesture with one hand while smoothing the other over a particularly recalcitrant rough spot on the leeward side of the dugout.

John said, “Oh-wah-nay” to the rest, giving a little wave, and was surprised—and secretly pleased—to hear several voices join in the farewell.

Whistling, he walked quickly toward the lodge, coming to its flap just as the first flakes began to flutter gently to the ground.

When John emerged a half-hour later, after a quick lunch of some kind of jerky and a stew made mostly of legumes, it was to a world transformed.

Snow coated the ground, blanketing the benches and roofs of the lodges in white. Only the chimneys were clear of snow, their feeble plumes of smoke lost in the flurry of flakes that fell with increasing rapidity from a sky that had opened wide.

The grey was gone, replaced by a solid bank of white, and John knew that Crooked Leg had been right. They were in for a hell of a storm.

Chapter Ten

 

He sought out Leg but could not find the man, so instead he fell to work at the communal woodpile, where people were gathering fuel for their individual fires. John took an armful and walked back to the lodge, peeking inside to inquire where he should put the wood. Little Bird saw his burden, smiled widely at him for his thoughtfulness, and pointed to a wide woven basket that sat to one side of the fire and the purpose of which John had wondered about only that morning.

He stacked the wood neatly along the bottom of the basket and went back to the woodpile for more. Three trips filled the basket to the brim and earned him another warm smile from Little Bird, who said, “T’ank you,” in English so broken that John had first thought it was some word in her own language that he had not yet learned. Recognizing, finally, Leg’s influence, he gave her his own wide smile in return for her words.

The children came in just then, full of excitement, apparently over the weather, and Tall Woman came behind, holding an armful of wood herself. She stopped suddenly upon seeing the full basket and then asked something of Little Bird, who looked pointedly at John as she answered.

Tall Woman gave a little nod and a smile that John was coming to recognize meant approval. Then she carefully stacked the surplus wood beside the basket.

Falling Stone was last to return to the lodge, looking strangely exotic with fat flakes melting in his dark, dark hair. Tall Woman said something to him, and Stone looked at John and smiled, and there was something in that smile both proprietary and proud that made John feel strangely warm. He looked away, toward Calls-at-Dark, who was playing a game with three stones and a pinecone. Winter Sun was looking on, offering advice, John suspected, when his sister failed to win, though John was not entirely sure that winning was even an objective. 

As darkness grew, Stone built up the fire while the women busied themselves with preparing supper. The children dozed in the warm light, and John laid down himself, feeling weary after a full day of work. When Little Bird shook him awake for dinner, the lodge was cast in shadow except for the ring around the fire, where burnished faces bent over steaming bowls of something that smelled so good that it made John’s mouth water with anticipation.

John joined them, taking the only available seat, next to Stone, sitting as gracefully as he could but still falling far short of the supple ideal the others so easily assumed. They shared an easy meal around the fire, the family talking now and then in short bursts of happy noise, which washed over and warmed John to a kind of floating forgetfulness. 

Later—much later—John would look back on this night and remember it for what it was and sometimes, only sometimes, and only when he was being really honest with himself, would he admit how good it had been.

Sometime in the night, John woke bolt upright, thrust from sleep by some horrific dream, only the remnants of which he could remember: Crooked Leg, running awkwardly and terrified, looking over his shoulder at something pursuing him, and John, staring down the barrel of his P-90, shooting not the terrible pursuer but Leg himself, who fell in the snow with an alien word on his bloody lips.

John rose from his pallet as quietly as he could and slid his boots on under the leggings, which he’d decided to wear to bed for modesty and convenience’s sake—and maybe, though he wouldn’t allow this reason into his surface thoughts, because he was used to being woken at all hours for some emergency or other back on Atlantis. He changed shift for shirt, layering over the soft, woven shirt he’d been given before a heavier hide vest that Stone had presented to him only that night, just before bed. Donning a pair of too-large, fur-lined hide mittens that Bird had given him with a sad little smile—he suspected from her expression that they’d belonged to the much-lamented Waits, John crept from the hut carefully, sliding the flap aside just enough to slip through, so as to let in only the minimum of cold air.

He sank up to his knees in the snow, which still fell fast and heavy from the sky, though the blizzard winds had died sometime while he slept. He wasn’t sure what time it was; he’d stopped wearing his watch when he’d remembered that it was set to Atlantis time. He’d decided to put it away rather than reset it, so it sat now, wrapped in the remnants of the tee-shirt he’d been wearing under his layers when he’d been captured, at the bottom of the carved chest beneath his bed.

He saw a faint line of grey on the horizon, so he thought that it must be nearing dawn, and he turned toward the hill he’d discovered the previous night, thinking perhaps to watch the sunrise in solitude. Of course, his plan went immediately awry when he stepped out into what he’d thought was the main street, only to sink to mid-thigh in a drift. 

How he could have forgotten the rules of heavy snowfall after only two years out of Antarctica was beyond him, and he gruffed to himself inwardly at being a greenhorn. Wading through the heavy snow to higher ground proved a more difficult task than he remembered, too, and by the time he reached a spot perhaps twelve feet from his lodge, he was sweating a little and swearing a lot, in a constant, steamy stream under his breath.

Four feet later, he gave up, turned around, and went back the way he came, finding the going only marginally easier for the path he’d forged himself. He hated the idea of being cooped up in the lodge indefinitely, and he hoped that The People’s technological advances—which seemed to have evolved more quickly in some areas than in others—had taken into account periodical snow emergencies.

He paused for awhile under the overhanging eave of his lodge, just listening to that strangely muffled silence of heavy snows. In the pre-dawn stillness, he could hear the flakes hitting the ground, so rapid and constant were they that they made a kind of natural white noise, which John found oddly soothing.

When his wet leggings became too cold for him to stand, he reluctantly returned to his pallet, removing the heavier of his two shirts as the heat of the lodge immediately bathed him in comforting warmth. He tiptoed across the floor as soundlessly as possible, but all of his caution in that regard was sacrificed for his heavy-breathed efforts at shucking the wet leather leggings, which were not coming off without a fight.

He had never missed BDUs more than in the moment when he heard Stone’s muffled chuckle from across the dawn-lit lodge.

John caught the gleam of Stone’s eyes in the dim glow of approaching morn, and he couldn’t help but laugh a little at himself. He must be a sight, hopping about on one leg and then the other, attempting to peel the wet leather away from his ice-cold skin.

John spun about in place as he lost his balance, and when he turned once more, it was to find Stone standing right in front of him. He gave a kind of half-yelp of genuine surprise—it wasn’t anyone who could sneak up on Colonel John Sheppard, after all—and fell backward onto his pallet, which made a harsh grating noise against the plank floor at taking the brunt of his weight so suddenly. 

Both of them froze in the attitude of guilty children caught in mutual mischief. John didn’t think that either of them breathed.

Only a sighing coo from Summer indicated that anyone had awoken, however, and they were suddenly overcome with silent laughter and conspiratorial grins, as though they’d gotten away with something really wicked. 

John moved to sit up and continue his efforts, but Stone stilled him with a hand on his chest. Then he knelt on one knee between John’s splayed feet and proceeded to remove the wet leather from John’s chilled skin, standing up to bring them away.

John’s shirt was rucked up at the middle, and he had yet to learn the word for “underpants” in Stone’s language, so there was little left to the native’s imagination once his task was complete. John watched Falling Stone’s eyes travel up John’s legs from his long, narrow feet to his thighs, covered in dark hair, and finally to his manhood, which nested in a thatch of darker, wiry hair. 

But Stone’s eyes didn’t stop there, even when John’s member twitched in response to the scrutiny. Instead, he followed the arrow of hair up from John’s shaft to his flat belly and then further to what of his his leanly muscled chest, covered with more dark hair, that he could see below the displaced shirt, and finally to John’s face, lingering overlong on his lips, which were parted a little in anticipation.

John found himself suddenly unsure, a feeling he wasn’t used to experiencing. It wasn’t exactly a common occurrence for him to be the only one in the room half-naked during such an examination, for one thing. For another, he was conscious of his body hair for the first time since junior high school, when he’d developed that particular secondary sex characteristic somewhat earlier and more thoroughly than his classmates. 

Stone and his brethren, so far as John could tell, were all smooth-skinned, nearly hairless on their chests and bellies and backs, and since John had seen no signs of razors or other shaving equipment in any of the lodges he’d been in (admittedly, to this juncture, few), he figured they were naturally hairless in these places. Of course, that had led him to speculate rather unwillingly on where they probably did have hair, which had, in turn, forced John to distract himself by enumerating in his head the atomic weights of as many elements as he could remember.

Gallium, John thought desperately to himself now, as Stone moved toward him, uh…69.72. Iridium, he said to himself, trying to ignore what a good idea his penis thought it was that Stone was approaching with an unmistakable suggestion in his wide brown eyes. 

192.22.

Actinium, he tried, as a hand ghosted up his belly, pushing his shirt further up his chest. The number wouldn’t come, lost in John’s struggle to lay still and not moan aloud, a sound that would surely wake one of the women.

At Seaborgium, John gave up altogether and held up a hand to stop Stone from doing anything more damning in the lodge where his family slept only paces away from their play.

John watched as Stone mastered his desire, eyes becoming hooded, expression neutral as he turned away to hang John’s wet leggings over a sturdy rack against the rear wall, apparently installed for that very purpose. 

John let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding and hurried to put on pants before anyone else awoke. He figured he’d had enough of being half-naked for one day.

Soon, the others were up and about, and this morning, Little Bird let John help out by holding Summer after her morning feeding. John had never had much opportunity to be around babies, and frankly, the little bundle of squirming life made him really nervous, but he held the child as firmly as he could and kept up a steady rocking motion, moving at the same time in a slow circuit of the room’s outer edge, dodging one or the other of the family as he did so.

Summer started to fuss some, but Little Bird was mid-ablutions, so John did the only thing he could think of. In a desperate attempt to stave off the screaming he feared was about to begin, he started to sing Tony Bennett. Of course, the only lyrics he could remember off-hand were from I Left My Heart in San Francisco, so it was this that he sang softly to the little girl, who quieted almost immediately, staring up into John’s face with sloe-eyed wonder. When he came to the chorus, Summer giggled a little, and he couldn’t help but grin.

He heard a soft laugh from the center of the room and looked up from his charge to see Stone smiling at him, an expression unreadable but warm on his finely featured face. Tall Woman, likewise, had a gentler look than John had ever seen there, save when she looked at her own children. 

So successful was he in his babysitting that Little Bird left Summer with him while she helped Tall Woman prepare breakfast, which was the same this morning as it had been the morning before. Once seated around the fire, they tucked in with relish, Little Bird eating single-handed from a plate balanced on her knee while with the other she fed Summer, whose contented little smacking sounds expressed their collective delight over the delicious meal.

John sobered a little when he considered what they’d risked only an hour before, and he caught a similar expression crossing Stone’s otherwise smiling face. He began to consider that perhaps he should have asked to have been adopted by a different family, for this one was in danger of destruction, he suspected, if he and Stone could not be better than to give in to such temptations so easily.

For the umpteenth time, John reminded himself to speak to Crooked Leg about the subject of marriage and clan taboos. 

As though the thought of the old man caused him to manifest, the door flap was thrown back to reveal the scarred face of Crooked Leg, who let in the grey light of early morning along with a flurry of flakes as he stomped inside and then closed the flap again.

He greeted Stone first, then the women and children, finally offering John the traditional morning greeting of The People, “Na-to-ma-ta-mey,” which Leg then explained meant, “May the sun shine today.” He followed this with a growled, “Good morning,” and then sat down in the space between John and Falling Stone. Even with his bad leg, the old man managed to be more graceful in his sitting than John.

Leg accepted a plate of food as though it was his due and then began an earnest discussion with Falling Stone that lasted well into the breakfast clean-up, in which John’s help was once again firmly rebuffed.

John drew the children to one corner of the tent and managed to indicate that he wanted to learn the game with the three stones and the pinecone, a request that was greeted with delight by both. Soon, he was immersed in the intricacies of what had at first appeared a simple game of chance. The language barrier didn’t help his performance, though it did provide a nice excuse when Leg finally wandered over to see how John was faring.

“Not very good at it, are you?” he asked, laughing at John’s mock-distress when Calls-at-Dark won yet another round.

John shrugged easily and smiled a little. “I don’t have beginner’s luck, that’s for sure.” Then he stood up slowly, feeling his rib pull a little and shift but without any very noticeable pain. 

“Where’s Stone?” John asked, noticing that the man had gone while he was playing with the kids.

“He’s gone to check on those who have no man to care for them,” Leg explained.

John nodded. “Do you have time to talk?”

“We’re talking now,” Leg observed sardonically.

John only grinned distractedly, refusing to be drawn off-course by Leg’s sarcasm. “I mean privately,” he emphasized, indicating the corner where John’s pallet was, which put them furthest from the fire and the activity thereabouts.

He didn’t have to worry about being overheard, of course, but he feared what Leg’s reaction might be when John revealed the nature of his questions, so he wanted to minimize the likely impact on the family should Leg lash out at him. There was no sense upsetting the lodge.

So John sat on his pallet, Leg on the kind of low stool he seemed to prefer, and when the former had found the best way to say it, he began: “I was wondering about tribal taboos. I don’t want to accidentally break any of them, you know, so I wanted you to tell me what they are. I figure the more I know, the safer I’ll be, all things considered.”

Crooked Leg considered the question—and John’s expression—for some time, and then he said succinctly, “You can’t bed Falling Stone.”

John wasn’t sure how to respond to Leg’s bald statement, so he didn’t. Instead, he waited, which seemed to earn a strange approval from the old man, whose hawk-like gaze finally softened to something closer to understanding than John had ever seen it.

“He is a handsome man,” Leg began, “And a fine husband.”

John opened his mouth to defend himself but realized he had no defense. He’d been playing around with a married man while sharing a hut with that man’s wife. What could he say? _Gee, I had hoped that your culture was sluttier, Crooked Leg, but I see now that I was mistaken._

“And if you were not of his clan, it would be accepted that Stone might choose you for a partner.”

That John could not let go. “What?”

Of course, he’d planned to be more articulate in divining information from Crooked Leg, but the crafty old fox had firm hold of the conversation and wasn’t giving it up now.

“But because you have been accepted as the guardian of his sister, and because you are now of the Clan of the Great Bird, it is strictly forbidden that you lie with Falling Stone. Such incest breeds discontent in the lodge, and the penalty for such a violation is exile, which this time of year surely means death.”

John could see the sense of the rule, even if he was not really a member of Stone’s family. He supposed that morning’s foreplay was an example of exactly why it was such a bad idea to screw around in the same lodge with Stone’s wife, even if Tall Woman did understand, which was far from given.

“So, do many married men take partners outside of their clan?” John thought it was a reasonable question.

Leg nodded. “Some. Some women, as well, have partners in other lodges.”

Something about the way Leg said “partners” caught John’s attention.

“Wait. Do you mean partners of the same sex? Women with women and men with men,” he added for clarity.

Leg gave what passed for an eye-roll in a one-eyed man. “Those who are inclined to share their beds with one who is like them may do so outside of the clan and lodge. It is against tribal law to lay with someone who is not your wife or husband and with whom you might make a child.”

“What…” John began, but trailed off, unsure of how to ask or even if he really wanted to know the answer. It seemed unwise to pursue such a course of questioning now that the taboos had been explained to him. It might seem to Leg like John was trying to find a loophole.

“You want to know what would happen if you asked to be dedicated to a different clan?”

Put that way, so directly, the very idea scared John. Asking for such a change implied a level of commitment that he’d never given to anyone or anything except the military, once, and then Atlantis. He wasn’t sure he was ready to move out of the lodge of the only people he really knew just to satisfy an itch he might scratch on his own—or elsewhere, he supposed.

He entertained the idea of seeking a different partner for about the time it took him to imagine himself approaching Larry or Curly.

No. He was done with cheap sex on the sly. If he couldn’t have Stone, he’d be content to have no one.

_Besides,_ he said to himself, _it’s not like I’m sticking around._

John snorted inwardly, but it must have escaped his nose, too, for Leg gave him a sharp look, as though he could guess John’s thoughts. But he said nothing, only waiting for an answer to his question.

“No,” John said finally. “I’ll stay here. I made a commitment to Little Bird and Summer. I can’t back out on them now. They need me.” Of course, he didn’t add that if Ronon and Teyla came into camp tomorrow, he’d be gone the first chance he got. 

He didn’t add it because it would have seemed ungrateful. And maybe because he was no longer sure he believed that Ronon and Teyla would come. It had been three weeks—twenty-one whole days, by John’s calculations—since he’d been captured and had watched his team walk through the stargate without him. 

He shrugged away the chilling thought and looked across to the center of the lodge, where Little Bird was rocking a sleepy Summer with one hand while playing stones-and-cones with Winter Sun, who seemed to be soundly beating his aunt. John could stay here for now. It was as good a place as any. Better than many he’d been in.

“Then you’d better keep Stone at arm’s length from now on,” Leg observed, breaking in on John’s thoughts. John silently damned the old man’s perspicacity. How had Leg known what had been transpiring between John and Stone?

John started to ask, but the old man smiled and winked lewdly, forestalling the question. “It’s obvious to anyone who’s looking. And I was looking.”

John’s smile was grim, a thin line across his mouth, as he asked, “Teach me the words for ‘dishonor’ and ‘duty’ and ‘exile.’”

Crooked Leg lost his teasing smile and gave John another look that bordered on understanding. Then he did as John had asked. When the lesson was over and John had the words by heart, he stood from the pallet and said, “I think I’ll see if I can help clear the snow from the street.” What he really needed was to be alone in the quiet, away from Leg’s too-sharp eye and Tall Woman’s singular focus. When Stone’s wife fixed him with a look, John felt like he’d been opened wide for all to see. He supposed it was guilt, and he didn’t like it.

But Leg shook his head and stopped John’s movement with a hand on his arm, which he dropped as soon as John looked down at him.

“The snow isn’t done. There’s no sense clearing until the sky is done falling.”

“Well, then,” John countered, “I’ll find something else to do.” He looked around for his hand-me-down mittens.

“When the sky falls and cold comes seeping into every lodge, there is only one thing that The People do,” Leg observed, something serious in his tone that made John stop his search for outerwear.

When Leg saw that he had John’s attention, he raised his voice and said something to Little Bird, Tall Woman, and the children. Calls-at-Dark squealed in delight, startling a little cry out of Summer, who had been almost asleep. Winter Sun gathered the game and put it away in a little open wooden box that the children kept for their odds and ends. Then he settled cross-legged on a fur near the fire and waited, eyes shining.

John gave Leg a look, and the old man leaned toward him as though to tell him a secret. 

“Storytelling,” he said, as though that explained everything.

Still, John supposed that without football, DVDs, and popcorn, things might get a little dull during a snowstorm, so stories made sense. And in the children’s eyes he recognized the same fervor for a new tale that he’d often seen in the eyes of the Athosian kids who came to him sometimes for stories when he visited the mainland.

John walked over to the fire circle and sat, this time with a little less awkwardness. He hoped that he’d soon learn the proper position, if only to prevent Tall Woman from having to stifle her laughter like she always did when she watched him work his way down to the floor.

_Rodney’s back would give him hell_ , John thought, and then he shoved that out of his mind altogether, watching Calls-at-Dark’s smile widen as Leg launched immediately into his story.

Crooked Leg proved a gifted raconteur, if the children’s reactions were any measure. Even Tall Woman cracked a smile as Leg frolicked on his little stool, hands going, face screwed up in every manner of expression, voice riding the registers as he imitated this creature or that. Though John could not understand the words, so skilled was Leg in making the story real that John knew it was about a little bird and a great big predator, probably a wolf or whatever canine equivalent the planet supported. And although the details were a little fuzzy, John knew that the bird was victorious in the end, if only because Calls-at-Dark, who had hung on every whispered word near the climax of the tale, burst into shrieks of laughter at the denouement.

Leg played dead like a dog, tongue lolling, head to one side, single eye rolled up hideously in his head.

Winter Sun barked with laughter, too, and Little Bird clapped, then Tall Woman. 

John followed suit.

Every eye turned on him.

“What?” he asked, looking from solemn face to solemn face. 

_Oh, shit,_ he thought. _I’ve broken another damned rule._

But then Crooked Leg let out a little growling laugh of his own and said, “You’re next, Sheppard.”

“What?”

“It’s your turn to tell a story.”

“Why me?” Surely the one guy in the room who didn’t speak their language was the last one who should be telling stories.

“The last one to indicate approval tells the next tale.”

“And you couldn’t have explained this little rule to me before you started your story?” John was a touch indignant but mostly panic-stricken. He didn’t think _Star Wars_ was going to translate for this crowd, and he wasn’t sure how much he should reveal from his past, anyway, since he was trying to blend in for the time being.

“More fun for me this way,” Leg said, completely unabashed in his delight over John’s discomfort.

John narrowed his eyes at the old man and then considered his current plight. What story could he tell them that would have meaning but not suggest just what kind of stranger John was? For all that he was beginning to feel accepted in the village, and for all that Stone’s family had done to make him a part of their little clan, John hadn’t forgotten that he was the military commander of Atlantis; that the Wraith were out there beyond the night’s stars, culling worlds; and that Earth was even further from his current home than Atlantis. No, he couldn’t tell them anything about himself that might compromise him later on.

Tall Woman said something low to Little Bird, who smiled and repeated it to Crooked Leg, by whose laugh alone John could tell he wasn’t going to like the translation.

“The women want to hear of what your lodge is like in your world, beyond the Eye of the Ancestors.”

John gave Crooked Leg a long look. He was pretty sure that Leg was heavily editing what Tall Woman had said, if said woman’s mock-innocent expression were any indication. She was definitely up to something.

John thought that he might have some fun after all, remembering a particular story about being far away from home that might delight the children and prevent him from having to tell Tall Woman anything really useful.

He looked at Leg to be sure that the translator was ready and then he began.

“Do you know what a tornado is?”

Chapter Eleven

The story took longer than he’d thought it would, if only because he had to explain a number of things for which they did not have any cultural equivalent. He was pleasantly surprised to discover, however, that The People had their own kind of Wicked Witch of the West, a hag they called “She-ho-a-ho,” whose apparent powers ran to the mischief-making variety. The Wizard of Oz himself was also familiar, though in their culture he was a woman, and she was all-powerful for real. 

“La-na-tan-a” could heal the sick with a wave of her hand and bring peace to warring tribes with a single look. Sometimes, she walked among The People in robes of glowing white fire, and then The People would know that it was time to attend her at her temple, far across the mountains, to which they would bring good things for her that she might bless them with plenty.

As Crooked Leg explained Tall Woman’s careful explanation, John felt the first stirrings of excitement. He was no Daniel Jackson, but John had some first hand experience with glowing beings himself, and he had a feeling that La-na-ta-na was more than a mere legend. He wanted to ask Leg to tell him more, but by the old man’s expression, he could see that John’s story was starting to wear on his interpreter.

So John skipped some of the good parts—he figured flying monkeys would take too long to describe and might involve some embarrassing arm motions, besides, so he left them out—and when the Wicked Witch got hers, the children cheered. 

John left the story there, stranding Dorothy in the strange land, with her new friends to keep her company. He couldn’t bring himself to tell of the simple magic by which she clicked her heels and returned to her world. 

Instead, he said, “Tall Woman, I believe you’re next,” having caught the reticent woman patting her hands together in what on earth would have been called a “golf clap.”

Woman’s vexed expression suggested that she did not like telling stories, but Crooked Leg cajoled her until she was smiling bashfully, and finally she began, while Crooked Leg translated quietly into John’s left ear.

_Once, The People of the Lake and Plain lived far away from this good green place, in a city in the stars called Sky Water in a tongue so old that none now could speak it. And The People were happy there and thrived._

_But a great darkness came upon the land and evil was awoken from its long, long sleep. The enemy was ravenous with a hunger long denied, and with their unnatural magic they swarmed into the sky like hornets, touching this place and that with their needle-like lights._

_And where the hornets stung, none survived._

_The People fought. They asked the Ancestors for help and were granted wings so that they could fly into the sky and fight the enemy._

_The legion of evil threw its terrible strength upon Sky Water, but the towers held and The People stood in their spires and wept the loss of their kin on other stars and swore vengeance upon the monsters who had slain so many._

_They asked the Ancestors for a weapon, one that would help them defeat the enemy and drive evil from their doors. And the Ancestors told them of such a weapon, but it came with a terrible cost: that The People could never again ask their help, for such help was a violation of the very laws of the stars themselves._

_Some of The People said, “No, we will not sacrifice our souls for the sake of this war. We would rather live simple lives and be free of such sin.”_

_And so the Ancestors took those who would not have their souls sullied with such a crime, and they came through The Eye to this place, the good green place, where they could live simply and love what was real. And one of the Ancestors stayed to see that The People would survive the first winter, when it was so cold that many died, and when hunger prowled like an awful animal from lodge to rough-hewn lodge._

_Spring came, and The People thrived, and La-na-ta-na left them, knowing that they would flourish. She built a temple in the mountains far to the West and told them to come to her if they ever needed anything._

_After some seasons of good harvest, The People missed their special spirit, and so they crossed the mountains in search of her and were surprised to find others, not of their kind, already living on the land._

_But that is a story for another time_ , Tall Woman concluded coyly, smiling a little as Winter Sun whined, “But mama, we want to hear more!” and Calls-at-Dark clapped wildly, smiling her infectiously warm smile.

John sat stunned, unsure if he was hearing right. If the legend that Tall Woman told were true—and he had no reason to doubt her—then The People who had captured him were actually Ancients, long separated from their heritage, true, but Ancients all the same. 

_That’s why the language sounds somewhat familiar_ , John realized. He’d heard Rodney trying sound combinations when the physicist had thought no one was around, and the scientist’s awkward attempts sounded a little like the fluid tongue of The People. 

John had to find this La-na-ta-na and speak to her, he decided. _Just as soon as the snow clears._ And then he caught himself, realizing what he was thinking…that he would still be living among The People come spring. He found the thought as irritating as the whine of a Wraith dart, that image still fresh in his mind from Tall Woman’s description of the “hornets” that filled the sky over a city that could only be Atlantis. 

Trying to distract himself, he turned to Crooked Leg. “Are you the last to clap?” he asked, forcing merriment into his voice.

Leg smirked. He had not been, in fact, as John well knew, since it was he who had clapped last, so shocked by the story that he failed to properly appreciate it until everyone else had fallen silent and stared at him in a meaningful way.

But the old man knew what John wanted, and so he groused a bit about John’s “cheating” in the game and then began his own tale, offering first the line in English and then in the language of The People.

_A long, long time ago_ , he began, _there was a stranger to The People who fell from the sky in flames._

Upon hearing this line, Winter Sun began to squirm, and when Tall Woman chastised him with a stern look, he piped up, “But mama, we’ve heard this one already—so many times!”

Reaching out two stiff fingers, she gave the little boy a firm pat on his cheek, which set his cheeks to flaming, not because it hurt but because he was embarrassed.

“Sorry, Crooked Leg,” he said with a low voice, eyes cast downward in shame.

“It’s alright,” the man replied gruffly, surprising John with his gentleness. Of course, the colonel was coming to the conclusion that almost everything he thought that he knew about Leg was wrong.

“When others come to visit the village,” Leg explained, looking at John, “This is the story they always want to hear—how a stranger with light hair and one light eye came to live here with The People.”

John nodded at Winter Sun, then, and said, “I’d like to hear the story, but you can tell another now and share this one with me later.” He thought it was a considerable concession, given just how much John wanted to know how it was that Crooked Leg spoke English and this story was surely the answer to that—and many more—of John’s more pressing questions.

But Tall Woman, sensing John’s intentions, said something sharply to Leg, and the old man chuckled a little.

“Tall Woman says I must tell the tale, and so I must. But she says that I may tell it only in English, and she and Little Bird and the children will try to learn the language of your people as they listen to my familiar tale.”

John was gratified by Tall Woman’s offer and gave her a wide, sincere smile of thanks as Crooked Leg began his tale again.

“The great metal bird in which he flew had caught fire and fallen to the ground in flames. When the hunters of The People, who had been out for many days and were returning, weary and victorious, home with their harvest of meat, saw the fire falling, they were afraid. They thought it was a harbinger of disaster and sought to walk faster, so that they might get home to the village and check on their clans.

But one young man, barely older than a boy, wanted to see if the bird yet lived, and so he broke away from the party, promising to meet them again at the village in three days’ time. Day and night, night and day, the boy walked, and on the morning of the second day, he came upon the still-smoldering carcass of the bird, its nose buried in the ground, its wings black with soot, its head broken open and its entrails hanging. 

He crept closer, hardly daring to breathe, but there was no movement from the bird. So, emboldened, he came closer still.

Then, he heard the groaning. Heart in his throat, the boy stopped to listen, and he realized the sound was not coming from the smoking ruins but from behind him, back in the woods through which he’d come.

So he began the slow skulk again, this time with the broken bird at his back, until he could see a strange figure huddled on the ground beneath a bush at the verge of the forest.

The bundle spoke in strange words, holding out a hand to the boy, and though the boy thought the figure might be a demon, he came closer, because—as he had always been told—he often let his curiosity get the better of his common sense.

He saw, when he neared, that the bundle had the form of a man but that something had happened to his hair and eyes and skin so that all color had been leeched from it. The boy had heard of such things but never seen it for himself, and so he did not at first know what to do. 

Then, the man looked at the water skin that the boy wore at his waist, and the boy knew that the man was thirsty, so the boy gave the stranger water.

Then, the man pointed to himself and said, “Aldun,” which the boy thought was his name. So the boy said, “No-wah-ta-eye,” in return.

The boy saw that the man was gravely wounded. One leg was broken badly, so that the bone stuck out from the skin, and one eye was so crusted with black blood that the boy was not sure it still lived beneath the lid.

So No-wah-ta-eye fashioned a travois for Aldun and dragged the wounded man, groaning and feverish, over the hard ground and back to his village, a journey that took three days.

The village, who had given the boy up for dead, streamed into the streets to see the strange sight of the boy who plucked a man from the sky.

And that is how I came to be here among the people,” he finished simply, smiling a little at the memory.

“And how you came to be called Crooked Leg,” John added.

“It was that or One-Eye, and I preferred the former.”

John couldn’t help but laugh. Then he asked, “Who are your people originally, Aldun?” He knew it was dirty pool to use the man’s given name against him, but John wanted to know the answer. He had a suspicion, but he could not be sure until he heard it from the man himself.

Crooked Leg’s eyes lost their light, and he looked away from John for a long time before answering. “We were called the Genii, but I do not think that any of my people still survive.”

“They do,” he hastened to assure the old man, whose shoulders, tight with tension, suddenly seemed slighter than John remembered, with a stoop of age he had not noticed before. “I have had…dealings…with your people before.”

If he had thought that Crooked Leg would be happy to hear the news, John was surprised to see the old man turn an angry eye on him.

“I don’t care,” he said harshly, voice nothing but growl and broken glass. “These are my people now. They have been for fifty-two years. Even if they were to come back today, I would not go with them. They are nothing to me now.”

And Leg rose and limped away from the circle, stumping toward the door stiffly, as though it hurt to walk.

“Wait,” John called, feeling guilty for having made the man angry. “Crooked Leg, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Leg turned to John an eye that was suspiciously bright in the light from the door flap, which he had pulled back from its frame. 

“I asked you to leave it alone,” he said sadly, with no force behind his words. Then he was gone from the lodge.

John turned back toward the fire to find Tall Woman giving him a dark look. He nodded acknowledgement and muttered, “You’re right. I’m an asshole,” before rising himself and seeking his boots so that he might follow the old man.

But Little Bird’s hand on his arm halted John. “No,” she said, in his tongue, shaking her head for emphasis.

And so he returned to the circle and sat, staring into the flames as the afternoon wore on, while Summer slept and the children played, and the women worked at beads and sewing.

He would find Leg later and apologize again, explain that he hadn’t meant to upset the man. Obviously, Leg had convinced himself that the reason he’d never been rescued was that his people had been annihilated. Knowing now that he’d been abandoned must hurt, John reflected, remembering his own bitter feelings while he was trapped in time dilation with Teer. He refused to relate his more recent experiences with Leg’s own, since John was sure that his people would not give up on him, no matter what. He hadn’t been abandoned, after all. They’d be back.

_Yeah,_ the inner voice said, _And I have some lovely lakeside property in the Sahara to sell you._

He told his inner voice to go to hell.

But as much as John knew that he owed Crooked Leg an apology, he also felt the need to pry. As far as John knew, the Genii had no flight capabilities now, for example, yet Crooked Leg had made it sound like he was not the only one flying a “great metal bird.” Of course, it had been over half a century since Crooked Leg had lived among his own people; obviously, a lot had happened since then. Maybe they’d once had possession of advanced technology not their own. John could certainly relate to that, remembering for a moment the joy of finding the jumpers and discovering that he could fly them.

John wondered, too, if Leg could remember the time before the Genii had moved to their underground bunkers.

Most of all, however, he wondered where that metal bird was now. He probably couldn’t make it fly again, but it might have technology he could jerry-rig into a radio or a signal beacon or something—anything—that would let his people know that he was here, waiting.

He supposed he could just ask Falling Stone about the craft, since it had been he who had found it to begin with…if he could speak the language well enough to manage it. John doubted he had enough words for “great metal bird falling in flames from the sky,” and the only one he knew who could translate for him was the last person likely to do so.

John sighed and then shook himself. He could do better than to sit around thinking of things; there had to be something he could do to help in the lodge. Checking the wood basket, John saw that it was only one-third full, and so he stood, donned his boots and vest and mittens, and indicated through a combination of hand gestures and the few words he’d mastered—“wood” being one of them—that he was going to get more.

Little Bird nodded, Tall Woman ignored him, and John hoped that the older woman would forgive him soon for his treatment of Crooked Leg. He didn’t think Falling Stone’s formidable wife was the kind of enemy he could afford to make.

 

Chapter Twelve

Outside, the late afternoon sun was dazzling against the white fall of snow, and he was blinded for a moment, sun-shocked, black spots floating before his eyes. He wished, not for the first time, that he hadn’t lost his sunglasses along the way, but there was no help for it. So he squinted into the light reflecting off of the snow drifts, focusing on a path that had been cleared from his lodge to the center of the village. 

Walking that way, John saw that there were several other men out. Some were on the roofs of their lodges clearing away the heavy snow. Others were working their way slowly toward lodges that had yet to have paths carved out for them, and John wondered if the occupants of those lodges were women without husbands, or perhaps older folks who could not fend for themselves. 

He soon saw that the path to the woodpile was clear—a popular destination in this cold, to be sure—and he picked up an armful of logs to take back to the lodge. He was halfway back, whistling under his breath despite his heavy thoughts of just a few minutes before, when he heard a shout from the western edge of the village, where the meeting circle met the trees of the forest that stretched, he’d been told, to the edge of the very mountains in which La-na-ta-na lived.

He thought to leave the wood in the lodge and return to discover the source of the commotion, but a second shout startled him, and the air-piercing scream that followed made him drop what he carried and turn toward the circle, breaking out into a brisk trot as he did so.

His rib twinged but gave no other protest, and so he sucked in the cold air and let it out in a rush, enjoying the stretching of his muscles even as he worried over the source of the scream, which had been cut off in mid-shriek in a decidedly disconcerting fashion.

He came around the gentle bend of the village main street to see a scene from hell enacted before him.

The snow around the circle was spattered in a wide arc of blood, the apparent source of which was the headless torso of what had once been a man. The torso was held in the teeth of the biggest fucking bear John Sheppard had ever seen, and he and his dad had run across a full-grown grizzly once while fishing for salmon in Washington State.

The beast was at least eight feet tall at the shoulder, with front paws twice as wide as Sheppard’s head and tipped with crimsoned claws that made John swallow hard and reconsider his definition of fear.

Where the blood had hit the snow, it steamed. A deeper crater nearest the beast might hold the head of the hapless victim, John thought, shifting only his eyes to his left at the sound of retching. He saw Curly being violently ill and was about to go to help him when the creature dropped the body and let out a horrific bellow that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up and had his lizard brain screaming, “Flee! Flee! Flee!” even before his hand came automatically up to palm a P-90 butt that was no longer there.

Behind him, he heard a low voice urgently calling his name, and John turned his head just enough to see Falling Stone out of his peripheral vision. The man was gesturing, one hand flat, palm down, as if to say, “Stay still.”

John kept his other eye trained on the beast, which was shuffling a little in place, back and forth on its massive feet, and nosing at the bloody snow around the body. If it charged him, he had five, maybe six seconds, to get out of its way or find a means to stop it, and John doubted that he could do either of those things effectively. He wasn’t even wearing a knife, had never gotten them back after the Healing Hut.

He’d been meaning to ask about being given a bow and arrows, since he had some skill with archery and thought he might need them for hunting, but he hadn’t gotten around to it, and anyway, he wouldn’t have had them with him for a simple run to the woodpile.

All of these thoughts fled through his head in the time it took him to register the beast’s eyes, which were focused now on John. 

Its shuffling had stopped.

He heard Falling Stone saying something, and John had never before so badly wanted to know what was being said. Doubtless it was advice, but it did him no good, since he couldn’t understand it.

John thought of all he’d heard of bears in the wild, but that only added to his indecision, since with some you were to play dead and with others you could only hope to outrun them on the charge. He had no idea what this kind of bear might do, and he didn’t relish the idea of lying down in the snow with his arms over his ears, hoping the creature wouldn’t eat him from the ass up. Then, too, the bears that John knew of rarely bothered to eat people unless they were sick or felt threatened.

Something shifted in Falling Stone’s tone, and John saw that the bear was fixed in place, great nostrils flaring to catch his scent. 

With a snort, the bear charged, the flash of foreclaws a blur to John, who felt a hand on the collar of his vest even as he began to back-peddle out of the beast’s trajectory, hoping it would miss him on the first charge.

He felt himself hurled backward, out of the way of the animal’s reach, and saw even as he fell the flash of leathers as Falling Stone stepped into the bear’s path.

Stunned for a second by the blow to his back, which resonated through his rib with a sharp, radiating pain, John did not see what happened next. All he knew was that when he was able to focus and breathe without choking, the bear was on its side, heaving huge gasps out into the still winter air, and Falling Stone was gone.

John struggled to sit up, to extricate himself from the drift into which he’d been cast, and he saw Curly moving rapidly toward an object on the ground just beyond the bear’s gape-jawed mouth. When John realized what he was seeing, his heart stopped, and then he sucked in too much of the cold air, and he gagged.

Coughing, eyes watering, he ran to the spot where Stone had fallen, kneeling opposite Curly and reaching out to staunch the blood that pumped with each of the man’s weakening heartbeats from furrows dug into Stone’s belly, through his layers of leather, by the beast’s enormous claws.

John dropped his vest without thinking, taking off his shirt next to fold it with shaking hands into a wide square, which he laid against the bleeding wounds and to which he applied all of the pressure he could manage. 

“Deer Woman Running!” he ordered, knowing only her name, not the words for “help” or “dying” or “oh God, no.”

Curly was away before John could register the noise around him, which was the sound of the village dogs circling the dying animal, snapping at its hide and worrying its haunches with their swift, sharp teeth.

“Sure,” he muttered bitterly. “Where were you when we needed you, huh?” 

Beneath his hands, John felt the hot blood seeping through the makeshift bandage, and he cursed Curly, calling into question everything from his parentage to his penis. Something brushed his hand, and he looked down to see Falling Stone’s eyes on John’s own.

The man whispered—something suitably heroic and morbid, John assumed, since this had all the makings of a death scene, and he’d certainly taken part in his fair share of those over the years—and John shook his head firmly. 

“You’re not dying, so just forget it. Besides, I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

But just then, John’s own name came to his ears, and he stopped talking, staring at Stone like he could read the words off of his whispering lips.

He heard his name again, and then a third time, and he realized that Stone was repeating it like a chant or a mantra.

“Shhhh,” John said in response, shaking his head. “Save your strength.” Stupid advice, he knew from experience. The blood wouldn’t pump any slower if Stone shut up altogether.

Stone’s eyes fluttered shut and then opened again, and with a Herculean effort, the man brought his hand to cover John’s two, which John knew were shaking against Stone’s wound and probably causing him more pain.

Stone lost consciousness that way, his hand against John’s, but John didn’t dislodge it when Woman finally came, followed by what seemed half of the village. 

If the sight of a dying hellbeast fazed her, Deer Woman Running didn’t show it. She was all brusque business as she gently pried Stone’s and John’s hands away from the wound so that she could look. Handing John a bunch of what seemed to be dried grass, she indicated that he should pack the wound with it, while she herself barked an order that produced a stretcher.

John helped to lift Stone onto the stretcher and then followed behind, still shirtless, unconscious of the blood on his hands and arms, against his chest, even on his cheek, though how it had gotten there, John could never say.

He thought he heard his name called from the crowd of lookers-on, but he was too dazed to do anything but follow the stretcher with Stone’s too-still body. He didn’t even notice the cold.

The next several hours would ever remain blurred in John’s memory, as though he were looking at them through a mist of blood and darker things. The Healing Hut, which had always struck him as warm and cozy, took on the atmosphere of a surgical theatre from the lower levels of hell. Stone’s intestine had been perforated, and the stench filled the small space, robbing the air of anything clean and reminding John of things he’d spent a lot of time forgetting.

He helped wherever he could, and Deer Woman Running seemed content to have him there, handing him bloodied rags and bowls of befouled water, ordering him about with emphatically pointed fingers rather than wasting breath on words she knew he did not understand.

They’d stripped him with clinical and careful haste, and through John’s head had fleeted the idea that this had not been the way he’d planned to see Stone naked for the first time. The shame that followed the thought was choking and bitter.

Deer Woman Running had cleaned the wound of Stone’s own offal and was trying to see where the bleeding began because a sluggish stream still trickled in time with his heartbeat, though it was slowing now, as Stone lost more blood than he could afford.

Adding to the portrait of hell were the man’s choking groans, clear indication of Stone’s attempts to stifle the screams that wanted to claw their way from him as Woman worked on his insides. Losing patience finally, John had thrust a leather strap between the man’s teeth and met his feverish, death-struck eyes.

“Bite down,” John barked, and Woman gave him a grim nod of approbation at this order, though she could only guess at John’s words.

Her hands were busy to the wrists inside of Stone, and John wished the man would just pass out. Instead, he hung on, words unknown to John made unintelligible by the leather gag. Now and then, Woman would mutter to herself, and once, she abruptly called to John to retrieve a tall, stoppered pottery bottle from a shelf of similar bottles. He’d run his finger along the row, pointing to one after the other until she said, “A-ho,” and he brought it, pulling the stopper from the bottle with slippery fingers. 

She nodded into the wound, where her hands held Stone’s wet flesh, and John poured, first a little and then, at her impatient command, more, flooding the wound. Stone screamed, a high, keening scream that rent the air of the dismal hut, and John shuddered, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes, until sudden silence caught at his ears. 

Stone had finally lost consciousness.

Things went more smoothly after that, both John and Woman seeming to gain strength from their patient’s silence. John wondered in a rare idle moment why there wasn’t another here to aid Deer Woman Running. Surely, The People had more than one healer? But then Woman was calling to John, showing him how to thread a fine needle made of bone with a coarse, strong fiber that John thought might come from a plant.

Then Woman was pushing his hands toward the wound, into which he reluctantly sunk them, gently grasping where she showed him, holding things in place while she sewed up the worst of the internal injuries before moving on to the muscle walls of the abdomen and then, at last, the lacerations to the outer skin.

She poured more of the liquid from the bottle over the wound, sponging away the worst of the blood with a soft, clean cloth. Then she rose stiffly from where she’d been kneeling on a stool beside the bed, stumbling a little as she did so. John caught her elbow with one sticky hand, and she gave him a wan smile, like the ones he’d seen on comrades who’d just weathered particularly brutal combat.

They gathered the mess up from the floor, all of the filthy, sodden rags, including what had once been his fine, warm shirt, and he shuddered, though the hut was warm enough, to realize he was still half-naked. Looking down at himself, he saw the signs of Stone’s terrible struggle everywhere he looked, and John thought for a moment that he might be sick. Then he drew in a deep breath and tried to put out of his head the look in Stone’s eyes as he bled beneath John’s hands.

John and Deer Woman Running finished cleaning up the hut itself and then they turned together toward the basin and pitcher that stood on a stand along the back wall of the hut, just to the left of the privy with which John had become so familiar over his own time in the Healing Hut. 

John poured the pitcher’s warm water over Woman’s hands, which he could see were shaking, though from fatigue or adrenaline let-down, John did not know. She did the same for his shaking hands and then indicated that he should stay there while she poured the now foul contents of the bowl down the privy. Refilling the basin one-handed, she handed John a soft cloth and nodded at his mid-section, as if to say, “Clean up. You’re a mess.” 

He fell to the work with a soft snort of disgust; he smelled twice as bad as he looked, and he didn’t think a brief sponge bath was going to make him much less rank. Days of smearing grease on his skin to keep off the cold, days since he’d bathed—sans soap—in the brook before his official adoption, days of sweating in leather—all had accumulated on his skin. But he did his best to get off the worst of the stains from his skin, feeling even as they were washed away that a part of them had sunk in, staining his soul. He couldn’t erase from his memory the look on Stone’s face when he had held John’s hands against his own broken belly.

_Damn it_ , John thought, shaking his head in irritation. He couldn’t afford this post-traumatic stress crap right now. There were things to be done. He wondered why Tall Woman hadn’t come around to inquire after her husband and wished that Crooked Leg would come by to explain what in the hell was going to happen now. 

_Stone saved your life_ , the insidious voice whispered. _You owe him your own._ John knew it was true on some level he’d never really considered before; the military had provisions for such things. If a guy died for you, yeah, you had to do for his family, but not by actually marrying the wife and supporting the hero’s kids. John had a feeling it might be more complicated here, where clan culture dictated relationships and determined who lived well and who suffered.

_Stone’s not dead yet_ , John reminded himself sternly, sparing a glance for the man in the bed, whose brow was furrowed as in a fever dream, skin flushed, lips thin and tight, pulled back in a rictus grin of agony. Even in sleep Stone was troubled by the pain, and he moaned and tossed his head, hands going to the bandages on his belly.

Woman gently moved them away, finishing the wrapping of the wound, and then wrapped soft cloths, stripped for the purpose from a larger rag, and tied Stone’s hands to the pallet, on loops of forged metal that seemed to have been placed there for that purpose.

John wondered if he’d had to be so restrained when he was walking in nightmares.

Shrugging away from another dark thought, he decided to go in search of Crooked Leg and to carry what words he could to Tall Woman and the rest of Stone’s lodge.

He started toward the door but was stopped by Woman’s voice. He saw that she held a shirt in her hands, and he nodded thanks and took it, pulling it on, grateful for its warmth, but mostly happy that no one would see his own unblemished belly and remember what Stone had given for the stranger in their midst.

He was stunned to find it full dark, a wide, wild moon rising huge in the southeastern sky. It hung there over the village as though trying to discover what event had cast The People into darkness, and John found himself stopping to stare up into the star-filled sky, found himself muttering, “Anytime now, guys,” and fingering the subcutaneous tracking device, which he thought, in his fancy, that he could feel beneath his skin. 

He wanted them to arrive in a humming jumper or to beam him aboard in a brilliant wave of light so that he could bring a doctor to tend to Stone, or better, to show Stone the world from which he, John Sheppard, came. For once, it wasn’t at all about going back to Atlantis. John thought he would trade his life there for Stone’s own, and when he realized the track his thoughts had taken, he couldn’t help the shaking that began. 

Retching, John vomited into the snow to one side of the main road. He heaved until he thought his eyes would burst, heaved until nothing came but blood-spattered bile. Dark stars floated before his eyes when he was finally able to stand up. So it took him a minute to see that someone was standing beside him, near enough to lend aid, if necessary, but far enough to give him a degree of privacy in his miserable state.

Crooked Leg said, “It’s not your fault, Sheppard. Stone thought he had a clear shot, and he took it. He was trying to protect us all, not just you.”

And before he had known he was going to ask it, John was saying, “Take me to the place where your great bird burned. I need to see it.”

Crooked Leg shook his head slowly, as though it hurt him to make the motion, and said, “There’s nothing left of it. Don’t you think I tried, over the years, to salvage enough for a signal?”

And for the first time, John saw Aldun, the Genii pilot, emerge from where Leg kept him, probably carefully locked away.

“Did you build the ship yourself?” And if John sounded doubtful, he did not care. Now was not the time for the false pride of pilots. He needed to know if Aldun could be wrong about his ship.

“No, but I knew it backward and forward,” insisted the old man, glaring at John with his one good eye. “We got them in trade from a race on the run from the Wraith, who were selling their fleet wholesale as they flew. They trained us, too. There’s nothing on that ship worth saving, Sheppard.”

John slumped, though he was still standing, his shoulders sagging as exhaustion swept over him. He felt a dull and persistent throbbing in his side, and he realized that he was ravenously hungry, recent retching notwithstanding.

“He’s not going to make it,” John said, voice barely above a whisper, low and harsh. “There’s no way he’s going to survive,” he repeated, as though getting used to the idea himself.

“Deer Woman Running is an excellent healer,” Leg defended, but mildly, without any of his usual sting. He seemed to sense how close John was to giving up.

“It doesn’t matter,” John observed, shaking his head. “The wounds are too severe. He’s lost too much blood. And there will be infection. He’s already feverish.”

“If you care for him, you can’t give up,” Leg said, gently but firmly.

John looked up. “Faith isn’t going to save Falling Stone, Leg.” He was angry, but not at Crooked Leg. The old man seemed to know that, for he merely nodded, neither accepting nor rejecting John’s words. “And it’s my ‘caring’ that got us into this mess to begin with.”

Leg slapped him, and John staggered backwards, more out of surprise than the actual pain of the blow.

“Snap out of the self-pity, Sheppard. You’re not so special. Stone did what he did to save the whole village from a rampaging a-u-mak, not to rescue his lover from a beast.”

Put that way, John’s assertions did sound both arrogant and pathetic.

He tried again. “All I meant was that Tall Woman is waiting for word of her husband, who has to care for her and her children. If it were me in there instead of him, Little Bird and Summer would still have her brother to care for them. I’m expendable, Leg. Stone is not.”

“So do what must be done to make things right. Save Falling Stone.” The old man had steel in his voice, and John grew wary, wondering if another slap were in his immediate future. 

“How?” John asked. “I can’t reach my people by radio, because I haven’t got one, and even if I did, I don’t know that they’d come. They’ve been gone a long time without word, and I’m beginning to wonder…” But he let the thought go unvoiced.

From Leg’s bitter smile, it was apparent that the old man already knew what John meant to say.

But a sudden thought had John standing upright again, walking right into Leg’s space, all fear of reprisal gone. “If I can get to the gate, I can dial the alpha site, and from there, it’s only a short trip back to the city, where we have doctors who can help Stone. I just need the crystals from the DHD. Who has them?”

Crooked Leg’s eyes were bleak. “You cannot use the Eye to contact your people, Sheppard. The chief will not allow it.”

“Why not? It’s our best chance of saving Falling Stone!”

“One man’s life is not worth risking the safety of The People as a whole,” Leg explained, trying to make rigidity seem reasonable.

“What risk?!? My people come through, save Stone, maybe fix the storehouse problem, and then we’re gone, back to our world, and you’re here and everything’s as it was before.”

But Leg had been shaking his head throughout John’s series of assertions.

“It’s not so simple, Sheppard.”

“But why not? We came through the gate to begin with,” he said, perhaps louder than was strictly necessary. He couldn’t understand the man’s reticence to explain.

“That was a coincidence, Sheppard. Once a year The People travel to the Eye and replace the crystals in their proper places, as handed down from generation to generation, in order to give their brethren from Sky Water a chance to contact them. This was La-na-ta-na’s only concession to the old ways. We must do this once a year for a single six-hour period. No one has ever come through before,” he added as an afterthought, “Not in the thousands of years The People have been on this planet.”

A thought struck John hard, staggering him, and it was a moment before he could speak. “Does the Eye go only to Atlantis…I mean, Sky Water? Is there no other place it can contact?”

Leg shook his head. “La-na-ta-na left us only this one link to our past. We cannot call any others.”

He spoke like a man who knew, and John let it drop.

“Then what can I do?” John heard the desperation in his voice and was too tired to be ashamed.

“Stone will live or he will die. There is nothing you can do but keep your lodge alive until such time as he can once again come home to it.”

John heard in Crooked Leg’s voice the wearing pain of years of loss, the kind of grief that grows over time to a suffocating strength. He knew that Leg must have lost those he loved, watched them die while the indifferent stars wheeled above him, holding the impossible and infinite promise of salvation for his people.

Dropping his head and blowing out his breath in a stream of smoke, John turned toward his lodge and those within, wondering how he’d tell them that they might never see Stone again. Leg fell in beside him, and together, they made the silent and familiar walk.

Chapter Thirteen [resume edit here]

 

There was a strange woman in the lodge when John arrived. Slim-shouldered and iron-haired, John knew she had to be an elder. She was sitting on the floor around the fire circle, holding Summer, while Little Bird and Tall Woman sat side by side on the latter’s pallet, heads together, faces a study in serious concern. The children were nowhere to be found, and John found himself grateful for small graces, and then immediately repented with a feeling of guilt. They had a right to know what part he’d played in his father’s wounding.

Tall Woman looked up first upon hearing the flap. She stood, smoothing her long skirts down as she did, and looked John directly in the eye.

“Wah-ha-no-a. She-sho-na-way in-a-ka-ma as-son-a-mey,” she said, her expression unreadable.

“She says,” Leg translated in John’s ear, “That you are to be welcomed as the man of the lodge.”

John nodded, holding it for a moment to indicate respectful assent, and then said, “I’m sorry about Falling Stone.”

Apparently, his sentiments needed no translation, for Tall Woman nodded once, turned away quickly, and retrieved from the pallet that she’d been sharing with Little Bird a woven shirt of dark green. This she held out to John, saying something terse and shaking the shirt a little for emphasis.

“She says that you should take this shirt to replace the one that you used to stop Stone’s bleeding.”

“But, it’s his,” John noticed, having seen Stone in it once or twice. 

“Yours now,” Leg said, as though it were a matter of little moment that John was being asked to replace Stone through this symbolic act.

“No,” John said. “Thank you, Tall Woman. I’ll wear this one. Stone will be back,” and John knew he was lying. So did Tall Woman, if the distaste on her face were any indication. Apparently, she preferred the brutal truth to a gentle lie.

Little Bird rose and took Summer from the older woman, cradling the sleepy baby in her arms and rocking her, a song soft on her lips as she made a graceful circle around the lodge. The old woman rose with enviable agility and walked from the lodge without acknowledging either man.

John wondered but did not have the energy to ask who she was. Instead, he wove an unsteady way to his pallet and sat down heavily to remove his boots. Leg followed, stopping so that John had to look up to see what he wanted.

“You’ll need to hunt,” Leg said. “There’s a meeting of the men in the great lodge in three hours. You represent the Clan of the Great Bird now. You need to come.”

John’s mouth might have dropped open. “What? I don’t even speak the language. What use am I going to be at this meeting? Besides, there have to be others of Stone’s clan in the village?”

He made it a question because it occurred to him that perhaps He Who Waits and Watches had been Stone’s only living relative, and when the man had suffered a fate that awfully foreshadowed his brother’s own, Stone had been left as the leader.

Leg affirmed this with a shallow shake of the head. “No. Stone is the last of his line until Calls-at-Dark is old enough to take his place at the council. You’re going to have to come to the meeting.”

John nodded, too tired to say anything, and decided that getting changed would be a useless waste of time, since he had to be up in a few hours anyway. 

“Will you wake me when it’s time?” he asked the room in general. A short sentence from Leg and Little Bird’s murmured response were the last words John heard before sleep claimed him.

What felt like a minute later, John was shaken awake by a hand on his shoulder, and he rolled off of the pallet and onto his feet with the kind of automatic focus of a green G.I. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, he ran a hand through his rat’s-nest of hair, realizing how long it had already gotten in the—he paused to calculate—twenty-four days since he’d left Atlantis.

Little Bird offered him a cup of tea, which he took gratefully and downed in one long swallow, feeling it burn even as it helped to bring him fully awake.

Leg was at the door, then, saying, “Let’s go,” and they were on their way, walking through a scant crowd of men toward the great lodge at the center of the village.

No one looked especially angry at John, nor did anyone avoid his eyes. Several men who’d worked with John on the dugouts gave him a nod and the all-purpose greeting, which he returned with absurd gratitude. He had thought they might hate him for his part in Stone’s injuries.

He saw that the smokehouse chimney was trickling a thin stream into the air just before he registered the savory scent of smoking meat. 

“A-u-mak?” he asked.

Leg nodded.

John was sort of surprised by the speed with which they must have prepared the meat for smoking, but he let it go when he remembered that the whole village faced famine in the coming coldest months of winter. And, too, there seemed to be some sense in eating the beast that had claimed one of the men and severely wounded another.

“Hey,” John said suddenly, having remembered a question that had come to him sometime during the long night of surgery. “How did Stone kill the damned thing, anyway?”

Crooked Leg gave an uncharacteristic chuckle, one that was appreciative, even admiring. “Got it in the eye with a knife.”

John whistled, impressed with Stone’s accuracy and wishing he could tell the man so himself. 

“But not before it got a good rake in,” Leg added unnecessarily. 

“Right,” John said shortly, hoping the sarcasm in his voice was apparent.

Leg said nothing more, just moved aside one of the heavy double door-flaps of the great lodge and walked in, seating himself on a bench to the right of the one reserved for the council of elders. The chief was already there, John saw, and several others, but none of the women had come.

“Why are there no women here?” John asked softly, keeping his eye on the chief to be sure he didn’t interrupt the old man with his question.

“This is the men’s council,” Leg explained impatiently. “Just listen. I’ll tell you when there’s something you need to know.”

John didn’t appreciate the arrangement, but he understood its necessity, and he soon found himself lulled into a kind of trance state by the voices rising and falling around him. The chief had called the meeting to order almost immediately after John and Leg’s little exchange. One man would speak, sometimes at great length, and then sit down. Each speech was followed by many minutes of silence, as though the listeners needed time to absorb what was said and consider a response. Then, the next speaker would rise and begin his speech. 

And so it went for hours, it seemed to John, as the backs of his thighs fell asleep and he started to slump in his seat. He was exhausted and hungry and anxious to see Stone, and he didn’t know what in the hell anyone was saying. 

Finally, frustrated beyond measure and feeling like there might be some sort of conspiracy in the offing, if the number of sideways darted looks in his general direction were any clue, John stood up.

All sound stopped.

He cleared his throat carefully, gave a respectful bowing nod to the council of elders, and started to leave the lodge.

Leg said, “Sheppard, wait!”

John kept walking, back straight, head up, eyes on the doorflaps.

“John,” Leg tried, a note of pleading in his voice that almost stopped John. Almost.

“Shay-ah-par,” came the now familiar, low growl of the chief’s voice. John stopped and turned to see what the chief wanted.

The old man gestured John forward, into the circle, and John thought it had a disturbing familiarity he’d rather not relive. So instead, he pulled an empty bench away from its place and positioned it so that he could seat himself facing the council, parallel to their own seats.

This elicited only a murmured response from a few in the crowd of men. The chief and the other elders showed no sign of disapproving, so John settled in a little more comfortably and made a gesture—palms up and open, as if to say, “I’m all ears.”

The chief began a monologue that Leg translated on the fly. So swift were the old man’s words that Leg stumbled in places, slowing down to try a second time the words that had escaped him the first.

The gist of it was simple. John was needed by the Clan of the Great Bird, but none knew his mettle. He was to stay in the village and train with a warrior named “Ah-do-na-way Da-na-see-eh,” who would teach him how to hunt with the short bow and long knife. The majority of the meat from the a-u-mak was rightfully John’s, since it had been Stone who had brought the beast down. Therefore, John would use the time when the others hunted to learn those skills that would stand him in best stead for his new role as Clan chief.

John could tell by the way the chief talked that he did not think Falling Stone would survive much longer, and along with the chief’s assertions regarding John’s new role in the village, it filled him with dread, which lay heavily in his belly, driving away the hunger that had dogged him all morning.

Talk shifted away from John after the chief’s long speech, and he realized he’d been excused, so he put the bench back in place and went to sit again beside Leg. A few minutes later, the meeting came to an end, and Leg leaned over to say, “Good move with the chief. He thinks you’ve got big balls.”

John snorted a little. “Is that an exact translation?”

“No,” Leg answered. “What he said was, ‘The man from the stars has no manners but a large penis.’”

John let himself laugh a little, choking back his astonishment that it had been that simple. He guessed all those years of bucking his superiors had finally paid off this time.

“So who is Ah-do-na-way Da-na-see-eh?” John scanned the room’s remaining men, noticing two of the three stooges standing not too far away, talking in soft voices and casting occasional glances his way.

Leg pointed to Curly, and John nodded happily. “Okay,” he said. “That should work.” Then he stood and started to move toward the door once more, throwing over his shoulder, “I’m going to the Healing Hut.”

No response.

The early morning air was bright with sunlight reflecting off of the snow, which was still pristine in places and undisturbed. Smoke hung heavy on the air from breakfast cookfires, and John could smell flatcakes frying. His stomach rumbled. Ignoring it, he made his way to the Healing Hut, where he paused at the doorflap, wondering if he should just go in or perhaps knock on the frame first. He’d never needed to worry about it when he’d been living there.

Finally deciding that he didn’t want to risk waking Stone, should the man be sleeping peacefully—undoubtedly a pipe dream, but all John had to hold on to in that moment—John entered as quietly as he could, scanning the smoky interior for signs of life.

He made out the figure of Deer Woman Running huddled under a blanket on a stool in the corner and saw that the brazier was giving off a glow and the same fragrant smoke that John remembered from his own early convalescence.

Slipping quietly across the pine floor, he paused beside Stone’s pallet, seeing on the man’s face a grimace of pain. He let his hand glide softly across Stone’s feverish forehead, alarmed by the heat he felt rising from him. Seeing a basin beside the bed, with a clean rag draped neatly over its rim, John pulled up the low stool on which Leg had sat those many days during John’s own illness. He soaked the rag, squeezed it out, and ghosted it over Stone’s forehead.

The man sighed a little in his sleep, just a suspiration of breath out of his tightly closed lips. Another wave of pain passed over his face, and Stone shuddered. John wanted to take the pain away and felt helpless in the face of such suffering. He wished he had even some aspirin to help ease Stone’s agony.

A hand on his shoulder startled John, for he’d been lost in thought, laving Stone’s sweaty face with the cloth and wondering what he could do to make things better.

He looked up into the face of a woman far older than the one who’d tended to John’s own wounds. Deer Woman Running looked very much like a woman at the very edge of her endurance.

She gestured to the bowl and then to the door, by which John took it that he was to empty the stale water. But she followed him out into the yard and showed him that she wanted him to scoop up clean snow into the big wooden basin. The penny dropped, and he did as he was instructed with quick efficiency, his fatigue suddenly gone in the surge of hope that filled him.

While he’d been gathering snow, Woman was working inside, removing Falling Stone’s blankets She was in the process of struggling to lift his prone—and now softly groaning—form, when John came through the flap carrying the basin. Setting it aside, he hastened to her aid, and together they got Stone up enough that she could lay a strong hide cover over the soft material of the mattress, to protect the cloth from the snowmelt.

Then they layered him with snow, John returning to the drift outside the door again and again. As the snow melted, they tipped the gather water off the hide sheet until it sluiced the floor at their feet. Then they packed him again in snow.

Stone shivered, his groans growing louder, but they did not stop, and steam rolled off of him in sheets. He tossed his head and his thick, wet hair caught on his cheeks and against his eyes, so that John just had to stop to smooth it away, feeling the burn still rising from the man’s cheeks and forehead.

Stone was going to die, and John was going to watch.

He shuddered and pulled his mind back from the brink of that thought, focusing instead on the repetitive motions: sluice, carry, scoop, carry, pack. Morning wore on into day, and John still stayed by Deer Woman Running’s side.

Once, he made her sit on the stool and do nothing, something for which she was obviously ill-suited, as even in her tremendous fatigue she fidgeted and scolded in a steady stream. For once, John was not frustrated with not understanding her words.

Sometime in late afternoon—John could tell by the shadows only, for he’d lost all sense of time in the steaming hut—Little Bird happened by with some cold flatcakes wrapped around freshly roasted meat, and John was amazed to find his knees shaking at the sudden smell of food. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was.

Thanking the girl, he gave her a weak smile and she returned it almost shyly, giving him a little half-wave as she walked away. He watched her go, wolfing down his sandwich in the process, and then returned to his work, filling the basin once again.

By the end of the afternoon, as the last of the day’s light was dying from the sky, John’s hands were cramped from carrying and scooping the freezing snow into the basin. The skin was chapped and bleeding, for he hadn’t worn his mittens that morning, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to hold the bow and arrows he was supposed to practice with the next day.

Leg had stopped by to deliver that news around the time when John was taking a gratifying leak out behind the Healing Hut. He hadn’t used the privy because he’d needed to get out of the Hut for awhile, and Woman looked as though she might need a minute or two to herself, as well. Leg tracked him down and relayed the message that he was expected to train tomorrow with Curly.

John nodded. “What if I’m needed here?”

Leg shrugged. “I’ll help her.” Then he walked back around to the front of the Hut, presumably to visit Woman for awhile, or perhaps to get word of Stone’s state to deliver to the lodge.

John felt a pang of guilt at the realization that he’d virtually abandoned them this day, but then he considered that it was in a worthy cause, one that they could hardly fault him for following.

When he returned to the Hut, it was to find Woman alone again, preparing something that smelled awful and looked worse, he thought, peeking into the clay cup into which she’d poured the concoction. He considered that it might be a painkiller; he seemed to recall such a stench during his own bout with fever. He hoped that it helped to give Stone some peace, for the big man had grown increasingly fractious in his sleep, tossing and turning, dislodging the snow so that they had to continually replenish it. His wrists where the restraints rested were red with pulling.

John hadn’t seen her give him anything before, however, and it made him wonder. He wished for the umpteenth time that he could talk to her. He tried gesturing toward the cup and making a questioning motion with his hands, which she seemed to understand.

She grimaced, miming Stone’s own facial expressions, and then pretended to drink. When she’d finished, the look of pain subsided to be replaced with peaceful sleep, which she indicated by closing her eyes and tilting her head back, as though she were reclining in mid-air. 

John nodded and helped her sit Stone up so that she could trickle the drink slowly into his mouth. He resisted in his delirium, shouting something that sounded unfriendly, and John was forced to pry the man’s mouth open at one corner so that Woman could lever the edge of the cup between his resistant lips.

More of the stuff had gotten on Stone’s bare chest than down his belly, John thought, but Woman seemed satisfied, nodding almost to herself as she cleaned up the spilled brew and indicated that John could let Stone lie back down.

John staggered getting up from the pallet, where he’d been perched to get leverage on Stone’s shoulders for the administration of the medicine. Crushing exhaustion struck him, and he stumbled again, trying to gain his balance. He bent very carefully to pick up the basin, feeling the blood rush to his head unpleasantly as he did so. Straightening just as cautiously, he shuffled to the door and out into the cold. 

He’d had to move to a new drift, the one nearest the house having been depleted during the course of the day, and he worked his way toward the new “mine” with the same kind of care one sees in smart drunks. John wasn’t sure that he could actually feel his feet, a fact that might have alarmed him if he weren’t beyond the point of caring.

As he dug them into the snow of the new drift, his hands screamed in protest, and he left pink trails behind him as he scooped fresh snow into the basin. His fingers burned and throbbed, and he wanted to put them in his mouth to warm them, but he did not. Instead, he returned yet again to the Healing Hut, his burden cradled against his chest.

Deer Woman Running met him at the door, took the basin from him, and barred him entrance. She pointed a finger toward his lodge and shook her head, saying, “No” in both her language and his.

He nodded, unable to find the words to protest, but he did promise to send Crooked Leg back to replace him. Beneath a blanket of stars, John stumbled blearily toward the lodge. Above him, a star plunged from its ancient orbit in a blaze of white fire, and John, eyes wide open, dreamt of Asgard beams.

Leg was asleep on a stool beside the glowing coals of the evening’s fire, and John shook him awake, indicating that Woman was expecting him. Without a word, the old man rose and left on his appointed errand.

Everyone else was asleep when John stumbled over to and then onto his pallet, and they were all awake and long gone when he came out of his slumber, his own shouts waking him from a nightmare in which he tried to stop the village from being flooded with a blood-red tide, but the impractical dams that he’d built were merely washed away.

It didn’t take Freud to tell him what the dream was about, and it left him in a dark frame of mind. He was relieved to find the lodge empty and the wash pitcher and basin both full. He stripped off everything, taking the chance that someone might come in, and took as thorough a bath as he could, feeling a little refreshed by the lukewarm water, though the harsh soap made his hands burn and sting.

Looking at them, he saw that they were beet red, the skin cracked and broken, bleeding sluggishly at the knuckles, where his fingers bent and broke the scabs open. He poured one blood-tinged basin and then another down the privy, forced himself to use a third to wash his hair as best he could, and then finally decided he was both as clean as he could be and that he could stand no more of the soap on his sore flesh.

He dressed in a second set of clothes that had been provided him and that he’d stored in the carved box beneath his bed. The leggings were identical—simple workaday leather, no fringe or beadwork—but the shirt was a different color, blue instead of green. And it was softer, worn more in the elbows and over the ribs. It made him feel strangely comforted, a feeling that evaporated as soon as he took in the sight of the last leggings he’d been wearing, which were filthy with the accretion of matter he’d picked up over the past two days in the Healing Hut.

He rubbed some of the heating grease into his hands, experimentally, and found that it soothed the burning quite nicely. Applying the rest to his arms and torso, he shimmied into the shirt, ran a critical eye over his vest, which had seen better days since the a-u-mak attack, and then sought and found his mittens. 

Emerging from the lodge, John was unsure what he’d find. No one was about, and there was an eerie stillness to the village that made him wonder for the barest instant if everyone had been captured by the Wraith or otherwise killed in some horrific fashion. But then he heard a collective murmur of voices from the direction of the great lodge, and he knew that they were meeting.

Not wanting to disturb what was likely an important discussion, John waited to one side of the flaps of the lodge on one of the benches that had been cleared of snow. He watched the pale blue winter sky for signs of life, seeing none, and then the smoke as it rose from the chimneys of three or four small lodges to his left. Spotting a dog, he amused himself by trying to guess what it would next stop to sniff, and when the animal was out of sight, John sighed. Maybe he’d just swing by the Healing Hut to see how Stone was faring, he thought, starting to rise for that purpose.

Just then, the flaps of the lodge were thrown back and Curly emerged, holding two bows and a quiver of arrows constructed of leather.

Without a word, the native brushed past John and nodded toward the western outskirts of town, where John followed him with some trepidation. It wasn’t that he was worried about learning to master the short bow. In fact, he’d had plenty of experience with traditional archery when he was a kid; his dad had always liked it, felt it was a fairer compromise for hunting small game than the powerful crossbow, which did too much damage and, according to John’s father, was a kind of technological cheat.

No, John wasn’t concerned that he’d look like a fool with the short bow. Instead, his preoccupation was with Stone, and he couldn’t help but think that he could do more for his clan at the Healing Hut than out here in a clearing, surrounded by tall hardwoods and staring at a makeshift target attached to a kind of stuffed dummy, which, John supposed if he squinted, might resemble an a-u-mak.

Curly was pointing to those places on the “bear” where the beast was most vulnerable to an arrow. Of course, the eyes had to be imagined, and Curly visualized them with a simple twist of his fingers around the straw-stuffed “head.” Behind the foreleg, too, was a weak point, probably in the region of the animal’s heart. Just before the back legs, in the soft tissue of the belly, was another point, not enough to kill the creature but certainly enough to slow him down.

John nodded his understanding, accepted Curly’s other instructions with what he thought was admirable patience, all things considered, removed his mittens, and then casually landed three arrows—whump, whump, whump—into the places designated by Curly’s earlier tutelage.

The man actually made a sound of surprised approval, something between “A-ho” and “Wow,” and took the bow from John, nodding and replacing one weapon with another, this one a long knife.

Curly demonstrated the throwing technique that Stone must have used to pierce the a-u-mak’s eye from a few paces, and John tried to imitate the graceful flick and release of the other man, only to have his knife wing off into the undergrowth.

Then followed several minutes of hunting through the snow for it, during which process John was very grateful indeed for his borrowed mittens. 

Curly showed John again, slowly, how to hold the knife and then throw it, following him through the motion with his own arm over John’s, his hand shadowing John’s. The proximity of the man, his warmth and strength, made John uncomfortable, but he sucked in a deep breath of cold air and continued, reminding himself that Curly didn’t know about John’s…preferences…and was certainly not coming onto him.

They worked on the knife throwing for some time, until John could at least get the blade to the target, though it didn’t stick there with any real force and was hardly a fatal blow, unless the a-u-mak was already suffering from a killer hangnail or was really, really old.

It was mid-afternoon by the time they finished their session, Curly having given John a dismissive nod and then walked off without him, throwing a goodbye over his shoulder as he did so.

John was about to leave the clearing when he saw that another warrior had appeared, this one unfamiliar to John. John nodded at him and said, “Hello,” waiting to see what the man wanted. Instead of approaching John, though, he simply stood there, staring, and finally John walked away, following Curly’s footsteps back toward the village.

The man did not move as John came parallel to him, did not even turn his head to watch John’s progress, which John thought exceedingly odd. Shrugging inwardly, he kept walking, feeling the stranger’s eyes boring into his back.

Then it struck him—stranger!—and he spun, seeing nothing but the fleeting form as the man ran through the woods to the West.

Cursing, John thought about pursuing the scout—for surely he was one of the enemy out scouting The People’s village—but gave it up when he realized that dark was coming quickly and he did not know the woods at all. He’d have to report it to Leg or the chief and leave it to them to decide what to do about the intruder.

Though it was almost dark and John had eaten nothing all day, he chose to forego his own lodge in favor of the Healing Hut, where he hoped to relieve Leg, let him know about their unwelcome visitor, and spend some time with Stone. He was half afraid of what he’d find when he arrived at his chosen destination, however, and so John dawdled, pausing now and then to stare at the spectacular sunset, which painted the sky in shades of purple, puce, orange, and red. 

John wondered if there were harbingers attached to sunset colors, similar to earth’s “Red sky at morning,” but he forgot the thought momentarily, as he heard a shout from the direction of the Healing Hut. He broke into a sprint, feeling a twinge in his ribs, and rounded the last turn in the road in time to see Deer Woman Running making like her name and moving with surprising speed toward John.

He met her halfway, and though the only word he recognized was Stone’s name, John knew that something was terribly wrong. Though he thought he might choke on the dread clogging his throat, he moved with haste to the flap, throwing it up and aside and bursting into the dimly lit hut, only to have to wait a moment for his eyes to adjust.

Leg was on the floor groaning, and as John hastened to the old man’s side, he saw the stool overturned.   
Looking up at the man on the pallet, he saw that Stone was sitting up, staring at John but seeing something else, and he was saying something, something that rose in volume until he was shouting. John knew then what he’d been hearing. The man screamed, his face ugly with emotions that John had rather not have witnessed, his arms alternately pulling at the restraints and relaxing into shaking weakness.

John marveled that the gutted man had any ability at all to sit up or to scream, but he couldn’t doubt that the wildness in Stone’s eyes had something to do with his seemingly superhuman strength. He had a moment of having to shake off the memory of a bright glow in Caldwell’s unseeing eyes before John moved, leaving Leg’s side to wrestle Stone back down onto his bed.

The bandages were stained bright scarlet—fresh blood from torn stitches, no doubt—and as the stain spread, John saw Stone weaken, sinking back before he could push him down. The man was still muttering, awful imprecations if his expression was any indication, and tossing his head with violent denial. Soon, though, Stone was so weak that he could only murmur, words barely above a whisper piercing John’s heart with their urgency and pain. 

He could smell blood and feared the worst. Removing his gloves, John pulled back the bandages and saw that the seepage came from lower down on Stone’s abdomen, to a place just above the hipbone, in that sweet slide of flesh John had always loved on a man, where the torso V’d down toward the pelvis and the promise of pleasure beyond. He looked up to see Woman staring at him with a knowing eye, and he wondered what expression his own face wore, for her eyes gentled and she took the bandages from his hand, bumping him aside with her hip as she did so.

He stood back, saw Leg struggle up without really seeing him, and then wandered distractedly toward the basin and pitcher at the back of the Hut to wash Stone’s blood once more from his hands.

Leg joined him at the basin, looking up at John’s profile. “Glad you came when you did,” he observed, rubbing one hand over his face. John didn’t think he’d ever seen Leg looking so old, and he felt a twinge of guilt that he’d stayed with Curly so long, that he’d spent the morning sleeping, that he hadn’t told them all to go to hell, he was coming here.

Leg said, “Training went well, I hear,” indicating that John’s guilt was at least in part misplaced. Someone had been by to see Leg, and John supposed that the old man was capable of seeking relief if he really wanted it.

He remembered then that Stone had saved Leg’s life all those years ago, and he reflected that maybe the old man was grateful to have a chance to pay Stone back for his help.

John wasn’t the only one carrying the burden of his own salvation.

“I’m okay on the bow,” John responded modestly, “But the knife is giving me some trouble. I should have it in a day or two, though,” he added, just so Leg wouldn’t think he was shirking his duty.

“Sleek tells me you did better than ‘okay’ with the bow. He says you’re better than most of the hunters he knows,” Leg added, looking at John meaningfully.

“Who’s ‘Sleek’?” John chose to ignore the compliment, unsure of how to take it and not wanting to seem proud.

“Ah-do-na-way Da-na-see-eh means ‘Sleek Water Rat’ in our language,” Leg explained.

“Ah,” John said, unsure of how to respond to that revelation. Curly’s wide girth came to mind as a good refutation of such a size-flattering name, but then, he’d never seen the man swim, so he guessed he shouldn’t quibble. “I have some experience with it,” John explained then, as though that were enough to say on the subject.

Leg let it drop, nodding instead to the bed on which Stone tossed restlessly. 

“His fever is down, but he’s still out of his head.”

John nodded. “I got that. Does Deer Woman Running think that Stone’s going to be okay?”

Leg shook his head. “Too soon to say.” 

John remembered then the reason he’d hoped to find Leg in the Hut, and suggested, “Why don’t we step outside, get some air?”

They moved outside, sitting on the bench to the right of the door, which John had cleared of life-saving snow the day before. In places where no one walked, though, the snow was still unsullied and it glittered now beneath the almost full moon that hung in the cold, clear sky above the village. John looked at the moon for a long time, trying to figure out the planet’s lunar cycle based on his own experience. The moon had been full, he recalled, as the figures of his friends and teammates had walked through the stargate all those weeks ago. It had been dark in the sky when the stores had been burned. And now it was almost full again. 

He’d been with The People for twenty-five days, he realized with a start. More disturbing was how hard he’d had to think about it before figuring out how long it had been since he’d been captured. So much had happened in such a short time, he reflected, blowing out a long breath and watching the steam rise, absorbed, it seemed, by the stars themselves.

_The way I’ve been absorbed by them,_ John thought before he could stop himself. Then he slapped his hands on his thighs and gave himself a good, hard mental shake. Self-pity was useless and foolish and wrong, especially when he considered what the man in the Hut behind him was suffering on John’s behalf.

Then he said, rather abruptly, “I saw an enemy scout today, when I was leaving the clearing where Curly and I were training.”

Leg gave him a sharp look but said nothing for a few moments. Then, “How do you know it was the enemy?”

John shrugged. “He didn’t look familiar to me, and he ran away as soon as I turned my back on him. He was going West,” he added, anticipating Leg’s next question.

Leg grunted. “I’ll tell the chief tonight. We may need to post a guard.”

“Anything I can do?” John asked, feeling again like he wasn’t pulling his weight with The People.

“Nothing you aren’t already doing,” Leg said, indicating the Hut behind them with a toss of his head. “She’ll need your help again, I’m sure. I’m too old for this stuff.” The voice was almost wistful, but John knew that the old man would rebuff any attempt at sympathy or support, so he said, instead,

“I should get back inside. Woman must be all in.”

Leg grunted, “Don’t know why she would be. She slept the mid-day away.” But then he added a fond afterthought, “She’s always been really good at keeping vigil.”

John thought that there was something deeply personal behind Leg’s otherwise innocuous remark, and he chose to pretend he hadn’t heard the yearning there in Leg’s voice.

“What’s next?” he asked Leg, more to have something to say than because he was genuinely curious. “I mean, for me. After the training.”

Leg thought about the question for awhile before saying, “You’ll hunt with some of the others. And there’s talk of a raid on the village of our enemy. If the weather holds, that is. There might be another storm.”

“How far is it if we sled across?” John asked, for he’d seen other men working on sleds when he’d been in the clearing working on the canoe.

“Four days.”

John nodded, unsure of what else he should ask. A lot of this was beyond his ken. Sure, he’d organized missions like this before, but never without benefit of flight. He swallowed down the longing that often rose in him to leave the earth behind and fly.

“Well, I’m going home,” Leg announced, standing up to follow through on his words. 

John bid him farewell in The People’s tongue and then turned to enter the Hut, where he took up the familiar work of washing away Stone’s sweat with a cold, damp rag. The man was quieter now, having fallen into a feverish doze, and though Leg had said it, John could not see any kind of improvement in Stone’s temperature.

Still, John was not a healer, and though he’d wished a thousand times for a simple bottle of aspirin over the past two days, he knew he didn’t have an ounce of skill compared to Deer Woman Running. That she’d kept Stone alive even this long with such relatively primitive surgery, that she’d driven his fever down even a degree with herbal potions and teas—these were admirable, even enviable skills. 

John once again felt his uselessness here without the tools of his trade—jumper, comm. link, gun. Still, Woman seemed to appreciate his presence for those times when Stone awoke with a shout, sitting bolt upright in the narrow bed. Then, John would use a combination of soothing words and physical force to put the man back down, to keep him from chafing his already raw wrists any further, to keep him calm and quiet.

In the darkest hour before dawn, Woman sent John home, having taken some rest herself. He found Leg once again dozing on his little stool by the dying fire and sent the man to replace him at Stone’s bedside. Then, he built up the fire for the family still sleeping in the lodge and went to his own bed for a few hours’ rest before the day’s labors began once more.

 

Chapter Fourteen

 

He was grateful to his military training for several things since his capture, but most of all, he appreciated the way that the Air Force had trained him to live on little sleep and to rise no matter what time it was if he was needed. So when Little Bird shook him awake just after dawn, he rubbed sleep from his eyes, ran a tired hand through his hair, swallowed down some steaming tea, and got ready to leave.

The girl stopped him with a hand on his arm and indicated that he should sit. He shook his head—he wanted to check in on Stone before heading to the clearing for training. But she was insistent, refusing to let him go, and so he sat, an impatient grimace pulling at his rough cheeks—he’d figured out a way to shave using an extremely sharp knife and a very steady hand, but he hadn’t had time in days now—until she handed him a hot flatcake wrapped around a slab of meat soaked in some kind of savory sauce.

All at once, John’s appetite roared to life, and his mouth flooded with fluid as he remembered that he hadn’t eaten at all the day before. He tucked into the meal with relish, moaning a little as the juice rolled down his chin. Little Bird laughed to see his hunger and handed him a scrap of cloth to clean himself. He smiled back at her around his breakfast, washing the delicious wrap down with some more of the invigorating tea.

Then he was up and out the door, only Little Bird’s lilting laugh stopping him at the flap. Here, she handed him a small pouch, such as he’d seen some of the others wearing, in which he discovered some of the dried fruit that he’d enjoyed so much on that first breakfast they’d had as a clan, on a morning that seemed to have been a thousand days before.

He smiled a little sadly and accepted the gift with the appropriate words of gratitude, words he’d learned a lot of in the last few days, as he and Woman “discussed” what they could over Stone’s struggling form.

He’d learned, for example, that The People called the Ancestors, whom they worshipped as their gods, “Ah-ho-na-me-ma,” or “The Old Ones,” and that when one gave thanks to them, it would not do to use the common word. Instead, there was a word that meant only “thanks to The Old Ones,” and this word, a sacred one, was not to be used for any profane purpose. 

The word was “Na-ha-a-lo,” and John learned its inflections by heart as he watched over Stone’s sleeping form while Deer Woman Running also took her rest. He’d used the word a lot lately, and though he’d never been especially devout, he found himself hoping that The Old Ones—one Old One, in particular—would hear his prayers and come to the village to give her people aid.

He knew that La-na-ta-na might be long gone—lost in some ancient battle, for example, or off to wherever the Ascended went when they got tired of watching over this plane. But it was his only hope at the moment, and so John clung to it.

Now, he whispered the word under his breath as he moved toward the Healing Hut, and whether he prayed for Stone’s having survived the night or the sudden appearance of a jumper in the sky over the village or the glowing light show of an Ascended being come to fix all of his troubles, John couldn’t have said. 

Day twenty-six, he thought, pulling the flap aside to find Woman and Leg deep in intimate conversation by the water basin against the back wall. They did not look up when he entered, though John knew that they knew he was there. Instead, he went to Stone’s bedside, crouching beside the pallet on its platform to feel Stone’s forehead.

It was damp but noticeably cooler, John thought, and he felt something inside of him unclench a little, though to call it relief would have been premature. He saw that the man was deeply asleep, his breathing deep and even. “Na-ha-a-lo,” he said, laying a hand flat on Stone’s chest, comforting himself for a moment with the steady rise and fall.

Then he rose, ignoring and ignored in turn by the flirting Leg and Woman, and left the Hut for his day’s training.

And so the pattern went. Very early morning and many hours of the night, John spent by the bedside of Stone, who did not regain consciousness except for brief minutes, during which he requested water or mumbled things too low for John to hear, even if he did understand. And in between, he spent his time learning to throw knives and practicing with the short bow and, once Woman gave him the go ahead, wrestling with Curly, who had seventy-five pounds on John, at least, and proved more agile than the military man had ever expected.

Still, John was wiry and lean, quicker than Curly, and soon he’d learned to use his speed to advantage. One day, he’d used a move he’d learned in the Air Force to disable Curly before the wrestling could really begin, and the big man had stood up with a look of such furious concentration on his face that John was sure he was a dead man. 

But Curly had only indicated impatiently that he wanted to learn the move, and when he’d mastered it, Curly searched out others, to whom he had John also teach the move, so that soon, six or eight or ten warriors were coming to the clearing every morning to learn something from John even as he learned from them. 

John lost track of time, only noticing the moon as it reduced once more down from its fat, yellow round, and realized that many days had passed since Stone had been hurt. One day, Leg showed up at the clearing and told John to come quickly.

Fearing the worst, John sprinted past Leg, who was hurrying himself as much as his halting gait would allow, and threw up the flap of the Healing Hut violently, expecting the worst—Stone had taken a turn, he was dying, he was dead.

Instead, he found the man sitting up with his legs over the edge of the pallet. He looked up from beneath his long fall of loose hair and said, with his deep voice sleep-roughened but clear, “Help me up.”

And he said it in English. John caught Woman’s beaming smile out of the corner of his eye and heard behind him Leg’s choked chuckle as the old man finally caught up with him, and he knew that Leg had been teaching Stone some English while John had been off learning Stone’s own trades.

John wrapped an arm around Stone’s back, up high, under the armpit so as not to pull on the still-healing flesh of his belly. Stone was naked except for a pair of loose leggings, worn low on his hips to keep the material off of his bandaged midriff, and John was treated to the sight of that broad chest, slack now from lack of exercise and the most lovely thing John had ever seen, as he lifted the man up from the bed and helped him to the privy in the rear.

He held the shaking man upright while Stone did his business, and laughed a little with the man when his sigh of satisfaction escaped him.

John knew how it felt to finally be able to take a piss standing upright.

But even that short journey to the privy and back had drained Stone of his limited strength, so John eased him gently down onto the pallet, arranging the pillows so that Stone could sit upright without bending too much at the waist.

And they had their first real conversation while Woman and Leg busied themselves with something outside of the Hut but still within earshot should there be trouble.

“Thank you, John,” Stone said, and John looked up, startled, to hear his first name on the man’s lips. It was to be a day of firsts, then, John thought.

“For what?” he replied, giving the man a shy little smile, unsure of himself.

“Saving me,” Stone said carefully, sounding out the words to be sure that they were right.

“No,” John said, putting all the force of his feelings behind it. “You owe me nothing. You saved me from the a-u-mak. I owe you my life.”

Stone looked puzzled while he unpacked John’s meaning, so John tried a few of the words that Leg had taught him and managed to convey the gist of what he meant by his earlier, English words.

Stone’s brow furrowed a little and he shook his head. “Are…” but he did not know the word, so instead he made a flattening gesture, hands parallel to the floor, palms down, sweeping across one another as though calling someone safe at third base.

John got it. “Even. We’re even?”

Stone nodded.

Realizing that they weren’t going to solve a deeply philosophical divide in broken English and the handful of words John knew in Stone’s language, John smiled and shrugged, as if to say, “Okay.” Really, it wasn’t, but they’d hopefully have time to figure that out together after Stone was on his feet again.

“Lodge?” Stone asked, though John knew that Tall Woman had often come to visit her husband once the danger of death had passed. Apparently, among the people, it was considered bad luck for a loved one to see his family while he was still in danger of dying. In fact, John figured it was a necessity that grew out of the early days of The People’s hard life here on this planet. Probably, they’d had to go to work regardless of who lay dying at home, and so it had become a part of the culture that you did not wait vigil with the sick but only came once the healing had begun in earnest.

“They are well.”

“Little Bird?” Stone asked.

“She is well, too.” 

“Summer?” And this time, Stone had a sly smile.

Obviously, Tall Woman had told Stone of John’s soft spot for the little girl. While it was true that John didn’t have a lot of experience with little ones, he knew that Summer, among babies, was exceptionally good. She rarely cried or fussed but often smiled, laughed, cooed, and made other adorable baby sounds. When she would wrap her fat little fingers around his own on those rare occasions when John was home while Summer was still up, John couldn’t help but beam at her. And she would smile right back, her fat cheeks appling outward with her grin.

Yeah, he was smitten, there was no doubt, and he didn’t mind Stone’s teasing. 

“She’s great,” John answered enthusiastically, smiling widely at something she’d done just the other day.

“Yours,” Stone answered, suddenly serious.

John’s smile faded, but not because he didn’t understand. He knew what Stone meant. It often felt that Summer was John’s, for he and Little Bird had a kind of easy agreement about the little girl, unspoken but obvious to any who watched them. They worked well together, and though there was no chemistry—and never would be—John was coming to understand that he’d be glad to be her man, in whatever way he could, given the constraints of the clan system.

John said, “I know,” showing Falling Stone that he took his duties seriously, and Stone reached out a hand to touch John’s cheek, once, lightly, as if to be sure that John were really there.

John closed his eyes and turned into the touch, and Stone’s fingers lingered, the touch becoming a caress, something more significant than it should have been. John pulled back after a few moments, opening his eyes to see Stone staring carefully at him.

“John,” was all Stone said, but it was enough. John knew. 

He nodded. “We cannot,” as though it were even an immediate option to consummate their feelings, with Stone still bandaged and the healer and Leg just outside the Hut’s flap door.

Stone nodded, eyes hooded but hungry, and then slid downward to lie flat once more. John knew it cost the warrior to recognize his weakness, and he said nothing, merely helping Stone to arrange the blanket and bringing him some cool water from the bucket near the foot of the bed.

Just before leaving, John leaned down over Stone’s dozing form and left a light kiss of comfort on his blessedly cool forehead.

Stone’s eyes fluttered open and he smiled sleepily. “Love,” he said, the one word hanging on the air between them just before he slid off into sleep.

John left the Hut feeling like he’d been both saved and damned and somehow not caring which it was. Stone’s smile firmly in his mind, John moved off toward the clearing, hoping to find someone to spar with. 

“Na-ha-a-lo,” he said aloud, looking at the blue sky unbroken by any clouds. “Na-ha-a-lo.”

And so John added a new element to his routine. No longer having to sit vigil by Stone’s bedside allowed John to sleep longer than he had since he’d been captured, and he found that his strength and agility grew in direct proportion to the hours he slumbered through the night. The nightmares that had plagued him from the beginning abated, too, until they were nothing but troubled memories he was able to easily push to the side.

He’d stop by the Healing Hut in the morning to give Deer Woman Running a break. He learned later that she’d spent that time having breakfast with Crooked Leg, which John thought was kind of cute, though that’s not a word he’d ever use in front of either of them, never mind that Woman probably wouldn’t know what it meant.

After the usual morning calisthenics—John had enlisted the older boys of the village for a regular Air Force regimen, and now it was not uncommon to see a dozen or more of them doing push-ups, shirtless but oblivious to the cold winter air. They’d finish the day’s workout with a run around the village and up the hill to the south, where John and Stone had shared their first kiss, and John never came to that place but he had to pause and linger long enough for the memory to wash over him.

The afternoons were often spent learning the finer points of hunting and trapping squeasels and the other small game in the area. The People took care not to overhunt the local population, recognizing the necessity of long-term planning, since this place would be their winter village for years to come yet.

And, of course, John also learned a few words here and there, until he could have a very basic conversation with the other men about the weather, hunting, or training without too much stumbling. With the women, he could manage compliments and simple questions about food and household chores, but little else was learned in that regard. He found that the men spent most of their time away from home, and he supposed that was necessary for the village’s survival.

Evenings he spent with Stone again, Deer Woman Running discretely disappearing when John appeared after supper at the lodge. Sometimes, he deferred such visits so that Tall Woman could spend the evening with her husband, but she did not seem inclined to pass much time with Stone, and so it was usually the two men talking in their halting way or playing the stone and pinecone game, which took on a significantly more interesting edge when Stone would demand a kiss for his winnings. 

John lost a lot, and though it was problematic to enjoy such stolen time, he didn’t stop it from happening. He wasn’t sure he could deny Stone anything, and John found that more than troubling. It took only a look at Stone’s slowly healing injuries to remind John of what he’d almost lost, however, and somehow that made the kisses and occasional caress alright, like they lived on borrowed time, time outside of clan law and the good of the people who lived beyond the Hut’s four walls.

Four days after he’d finally been able to stand, Stone said, “Out,” and worked his way to the edge of the pallet. He was still pale and weak, but he’d been able to spend more and more time over the past days walking around the Hut’s interior. John could understand Stone’s cabin fever, but he feared that the man was not yet ready.

And, truthfully, he feared what Deer Woman Running would do to him if she found out John had let Stone go outside before she gave the warrior the go-ahead. Still, John had found Stone a compelling orator, never mind that they both spoke only broken parts of each other’s languages, and more than his words, Stone’s eyes gave away his desperate desire to be free of the pallet and the Hut for a little time.

So John assented, though not without considerable hesitation. Offering the man an arm so that he could stand without bending too much at the abdomen, John steadied Stone for a moment and then let him go, quickly grabbing a blanket off of the bed and wrapping it around the big man’s broad shoulders lest he catch a chill in the frigid night air.

John reflected that he’d done such a thing himself when the village stores had been burned all those many nights ago, and he figured that Stone was better suited for this kind of foolishness than John had been. Plus, John hadn’t had any help.

Keeping an eye on the man, John let Stone push aside the flap and precede him out the door. 

He almost ran into the taller man as he exited the Hut, for Stone had stopped just a few steps outside the door and was staring up in wonder at the starlit sky, his breath pluming out in long gusts that clouded John’s view of the moon, rising fat and half-full over the hill to the south.

Stone said something low that John knew he was not meant to hear, and then the man began to walk, slowly and with an uncharacteristic carefulness, as though he were unsure if his legs would hold him. The hard-packed snow beneath their feet muffled their movements, and they made it several yards from the Healing Hut before anyone emerged from his own lodge to see who was about at that hour.

The man, whom John thought was Tree Who Bends in the Wind, said hello and kept walking, as though seeing Stone up and about wasn’t a rare occurrence. Stone didn’t seem put out by the slight, however, and John wondered if the other man had been following some sort of tribal protocol. Perhaps acknowledging Stone’s presence would indicate his weakness or something. John didn’t know, and so he filed it away as something to ask Leg later on.

John thought that they might be going to the lodge, but Stone took a sharp turn to the east, skirting stealthily between two close-set lodges, to come to the slight rise on that side of the village, where the dark evergreens came down to the edge of the lodges themselves and made the shadows deep and long.

It occurred to John that the last time they’d been in a dark place like this, John had driven Stone back from him, refusing his advances. Now, he fairly ached for Stone to make a move, but John knew it was a foolish hope and one that he should be fighting, not pining for. 

But Stone did not stop at the treeline, moving instead steadily past the verge of the woods and into the darkness beyond. John followed, feeling less and less sanguine about the situation, hoping that Stone would stop soon. He could see that the man was struggling even with the slight incline, and John feared that if the warrior collapsed out here, there was no way that John could get him back to the Hut without help.

Soon, though, Stone stopped, turning his back to a wide tree and leaning against it. His breath was bursting from him in short, sharp pants, and John spared a glimpse at Stone’s bandages, hoping to see no spots of red there. They were clean, and John sighed in relief.

Then Stone beckoned John, reaching his hand out, palm up, fingers curled, and John went, all thoughts of discretion and incest and the tribal good going right from his head. Here, the ground sloped so that John was lower than Stone, who stood on the roots of the great tree against which he was leaning. John’s head snuggled into the hollow of Stone’s throat, and the man wrapped the blanket he was wearing around them both.

There they stood for a long, long time, John feeling Stone’s breathing steady under his head, hearing his heart pounding evenly beneath his ear. He wanted to stay there forever, like that, wrapped in the warmth of Stone, serenaded by his sure breath.

Soon, however, John felt Stone’s length hard against his belly and knew that his own was equally uncomfortable. Not stopping to think about consequences or even about the condition of the other man, John reached out a shaking hand and released Stone’s shaft from the loose leggings he’d been wearing. 

He wrapped his hand around that hard, warm length and ran it upward, eliciting a groan from Stone, who threw his head back against the tree and whispered John’s name into the night.

John repeated the motion, gaining confidence as Stone rocked his hips toward John and groaned his name again. Stone gripped John’s shoulders and pulled him closer, John bending his elbow to accommodate the shift in position, and as the taller man plunged his tongue into John’s mouth, John felt the hot surge across his hand, heard the desperate hum of a swallowed scream in his own mouth, and could not stop his groan from clawing its way up out of his belly. 

He drew his mouth away from Stone, muffling it against the big man’s shoulder, and before the other man had even stopped shuddering, his hand was down John’s pants, long fingers wrapped tightly around John’s aching shaft, hand moving in a sure motion, a little rough, a little fast, and so perfect John wanted to scream.

As it was, he had to bite Stone’s collarbone, which evoked a choking sound from Stone, who increased the furious motion of his moving hand.

Soon, John was rocking into Stone’s fist, hips pistoning, and then his head went back with a snap, and he shouted, unable to stop himself as he came and came and came in Stone’s hand and on his belly.

They shivered in the sudden cold as they stepped away from one another to right themselves, John staring ruefully at the spreading stain on Stone’s bandages, evidence of their shared passion. He wondered how Stone would explain it away, and then he forgot his worry when the man drew John close and kissed him, a hot, wet promise of more glory to come.

A voice behind them said something urgent and angry, and John drew away, spinning on his heel, hands up in the defensive posture he’d been learning, scant light gleaming on the long blade in his right hand.

The man emerged from a shadow, stepping into a small circle of light filtering through the branches above, and John saw that it was Curly—Sleek Water Rat. Sleek repeated himself, and Stone responded, something dark edging the latter man’s voice as he took a step forward and then stumbled, John’s arms going out automatically to halt his fall.

Stone steadied himself with John’s help and then John let go, knowing that Stone needed to appear strong now. He had a feeling that Curly was not in an understanding mood.

He refused to look away from Curly’s searching eyes, though he knew that the other man disapproved, and John wondered if it was because of the incest angle or because they were both men. He guessed it didn’t matter; if Curly chose to make something of it, both John and Stone were screwed, and not in a good way.

But as he listened to their heavy whispers, which carried the hint of urgency in them that John had heard before, he realized that they weren’t fighting, really, but exchanging offers, a kind of bargaining that made John shift uncomfortably and look from one to the other, trying to decipher whatever he could.

Eventually, Stone stepped back, a look of disgust on his face, and he shook his head. “Go,” he said in his own language, and he made an imperious gesture with one hand.

Curly, not liking that at all, said something sharp and ugly, judging by his expression, and Stone lashed out, catching the other man across the cheek with one open hand.

It was a gesture of disrespect, John knew. Leg had been sure to teach him that soon after a particularly difficult sparring session, when one of the warriors had done that to another. The ensuing brawl was among the most brutal John had ever witnessed, as it took in most of the men in the training session, all of them being related by clan to one or the other of the disputants.

But Curly didn’t strike back. Instead, he bowed his head, muttered something low to Stone’s feet, and backed slowly out of their sight, turning once he’d come to the next line of trees and moving off briskly down the hill toward the village.

John gave Stone a long look, utterly mystified, and Stone shrugged, as if it say that it was over and that there was nothing to worry about. But John wondered, and he couldn’t quite push back the uneasiness that had flooded him when Curly had first discovered them.

They made it back to the Healing Hut without further incident, cleaned Stone up as best they could, and put the big man to bed. As he sighed toward sleep, Stone reached out a strong hand to cup John’s cheek, and he said again the one word in English he’d learned the best, it seemed to John.

When Stone began to snore softly, John left to return to his lodge, stopping at Leg’s little lodge long enough to let Woman know that her patient was sleeping peacefully. 

That night, John dreamed of flying machines and madmen with ugly faces who taunted him while he stood naked, surrounded by tall trees, and cried out for Stone in a broken voice. He awoke in a tangle of blankets, wondering if he’d been crying the man’s name aloud. But no sound came from the other side of the lodge, and so he settled back against the pillows, wide awake and waiting for the sun to rise.

Chapter Fifteen

 

The next morning would last in John’s memory not as the morning after he and Stone had finally, to some degree, consummated their relationship. No, that pleasure was superseded by the fact that Little Bird handed John only a piece of jerky that morning, an apologetic little smile on her face, for the grain had run out the day before. The few dried berries she gave him for his belt pouch were tough and dry to the point of being inedible.

With a sinking feeling in his stomach that had nothing to do with hunger, John made his way to the Healing Hut, suddenly unsure of how he would react to seeing Stone again. He was half afraid that an idiot’s grin would give him away to anyone looking, and he was equally afraid that Stone wouldn’t smile at all.

But he’d wasted his worry, as it turned out, for Stone was nowhere to be found. When he entered the Hut, John saw Deer Woman Running working to wrap the bedding for washing at the brook. The pallet looked bare in the morning light, a harbinger of sure disaster, and John had to try to speak twice before the word came. “Stone?” he asked in Woman’s own language. 

Woman nodded to the door through which John had just come, firing off something quick and sharp, the only word of which John recognized being “lodge.”

He thought it odd that he hadn’t passed the man on his way to the Healing Hut if Stone had, indeed, returned to the lodge, but John thought maybe he’d stopped at Leg’s. Checking the old man’s lodge proved unhelpful, however, and John finally gave up the search, telling himself that he was going to be late for morning calisthenics with the village boys, ignoring the niggling voice that insisted he was being a coward.

He heard the discordant hum of angry voices just before he rounded the bend in the road that took him to the clearing where he worked out in the morning and trained throughout the day. All of the men of the village, it seemed, were circled around something in the center of the clearing.

As John approached, several the men spotted him and stepped aside to let him see.

There, on the ground, sweat beading on their brows and running in rivulets down their naked backs, were Stone and Curly, wrestling with furious intent, faces malformed by effort, teeth clenched tight against the strain. Stone was losing badly, John could see, his mask of focus slipping to show the pain the effort was costing him just to keep his hands around Curly’s torso.

Livid in the cold morning air were the perfect marks of John’s teeth on Stone’s collarbone. 

Fighting the flushing he felt sure was reddening his cheeks, John stepped into the circle, and the men closed behind him, making it clear that he was being confined.

John searched the circle and found Crooked Leg, his face impassive, eyes glittering with anger, and for the brief moment during which he made eye contact with John, the latter could see that Leg blamed John for what was happening between the two warriors. 

“What do I do?” John asked Leg in English. The old man shrugged and looked away.

He crossed the clearing in four long strides and bumped up against the old man, ignoring the hands that came up to hold him off.

“What do I do, Crooked Leg?” John demanded, his voice dropping into the dangerous register that meant someone would die if he didn’t get an answer.

“There is nothing you can do,” Leg spat back, just as angry as John. “You have done this to Falling Stone, but it is he who must stand the challenge.”

A cold certainty washed through him, then, and John shuddered. He knew of what Leg spoke; Curly hadn’t kept his own counsel, after all.

“Stone doesn’t deserve the blame for this, Crooked Leg. Let me take some of the burden.”

Leg only shook his head and spat heavily into the snow. “You don’t get a say in it. You are an outsider, after all. Stone knew better. You can escape blame by ignorance.”

“But I’m not ignorant!” John insisted, putting some pleading into his voice. “Please, Leg. Stone isn’t strong enough to withstand this kind of fighting.”

“You should have thought of that when you took him to the woods.” And Crooked Leg turned away.

John stood for a minute and then two, watching the men rolling in the mud of the clearing. Curly was shorter than Stone by six inches but at least fifty pounds heavier, and Stone, of course, was still a convalescent, still healing from the gutting he’d taken at the claws of the a-u-mak. The scars stood out red and ugly in the morning light, the flesh around them puckered and angry, and John knew that Stone could be doing damage that even Deer Woman Running could not repair.

So he did what he would have done in the old days. Without pausing to think of the consequences, he stepped up to the two and separated them with a well-aimed kick at Curly’s exposed ribs, where he straddled the strangling Stone.

Curly flipped off of Stone and came up almost at once, long knife gleaming naked in the weak sunlight of winter.

Several angry voices raised in protest, but no one interfered as Curly lunged at John with the knife, and John sidestepped, pulling his own blade from its sheath at his waist, where he’d become accustomed to carrying it.

He held the blade as he’d been taught—taught by the very man against whom he now stood over Stone’s prone form—waiting for the strike and watching his opponent’s eyes.

Curly came at John again, and this time John gave the man a shove as he swiveled free of the knife-fall. Curly stumbled over Stone’s outstretched arm but righted himself quickly, circling the body that had become their battle ground. 

John wished that Stone would move, say something, anything to indicate that he was alright, but the big man was silent and, except for panting breaths, unmoving.

John took a step backward and then another, leading Curly away from John’s lover, but he felt hands at his back and knew that the circle had tightened. For whatever reason, they’d decided to let this breach of battle etiquette go unanswered—perhaps that stranger-from-the-stars get-out-of-jail-free card, John had time to reflect—but they weren’t going to let him break all of the rules.

With a cry, Curly came at John again, and the colonel stepped inside the downward sweep of Curly’s right arm, blocking the blow and twisting the arm up and behind the man. But he was out of the grip at once, greased skin sliding out of John’s fingers, and as he swiveled around behind John, he got in a glancing blow to John’s cheek with the blade’s point.

John winced, wiped the blood away, and watched. Curly was on the offensive again, but more careful now, recognizing that what John lacked in size he made up for in speed, something that the bigger man should have learned already but seemed to have forgotten in his initial rage at John’s interference.

His third attempt at John’s throat was far more cunning, for he delivered a feint with his right hand, slashing down sloppily, it seemed, and then switched hands in mid-motion, bringing the flat of his left hand against John’s windpipe in a move that John himself had taught the other man.

John caught the change at the last possible second and staggered back a half-step, so that instead of a crushed windpipe, he got a stinging, strangling blow that sent him reeling back, coughing violently, eyes watering. He dropped and rolled instinctively, feeling the rush of the man’s weight over him as Curly drove him into the ring of men surrounding their fight.

Staggering to his feet, still blind from the throat-blow, John spun suddenly, dropped his shoulder, and caught Curly in the midriff, feeling the flat of the knife fall on his back as he took the man up and over, dropping him heavily into the mud on the other side of him.

Wiping the last of the sweat and tears from his eyes, John spun again, catching Curly on the chin with the toe of his light boots, feeling the sting of it up into his toes and wishing for his standard issue boots in a way that he had not for many, many days.

As Curly rolled to avoid a second kick, John caught him in the kidneys, turning him onto his belly, where he blew like a beached whale for a moment before pushing himself upward onto his hands and knees. But John was on the offensive now, unable to leash his rage, and so he lashed out again, catching Curly once again in the ribs, feeling something give in the big man’s side.

Curly gave a grunt and grabbed his ribs, rolling once more onto his back, all grace gone, fresh blood spewing from his gasping mouth as he tried to breathe around what was certainly a punctured lung.

John moved in again, ready for the kill now, unmindful of the rising voices around him, until a hand on his arm stopped him. He turned into the arm and brought his knife up to lash out and was stopped at the last second by the familiar eyes staring down at him—Stone’s eyes.

“No,” Stone said, shaking his head and reaching out to wrap around the hand that held John’s blade. “No,” he said again, exerting pressure. John dropped the hand but did not sheathe his blade, keeping one eye on Curly, who was being helped up now by several of the men John recognized as his original captors, many of whom he now knew by their own names.

He saw in the circle, too, the boys who he’d been working out with for many days, and the men of the village with whom he’d hunted and trapped small game, with whom he’d trained and been trained by in turn. On some faces, he saw anger and disgust, on others a kind of bewildered disappointment. On too few, he found sympathy and understanding.

Stone said something to him, then, and John looked at his lover, whose hands were shaking, he saw, and whose face had lost some of the robust color it had only recently regained. Stone’s sweat was drying in the cold morning air, making him shiver, and John drew off his own vest and covered Stone with it. It was a testament to how badly Stone must feel that he accepted it without a struggle.

John wrapped an arm around Stone and started to lead him from the circle, but none would move to let them leave. He looked up into the angry eyes of several men of Curly’s clan, and he knew that the day was not done.

Raising his voice so that Leg would hear him, John said, “Tell them that I will be back and they can have a run at me then. But first, I must get Stone to the Healing Hut.”

Leg translated, and Stone stirred a little in John’s grip, but John squeezed to still the man and said, “Stop” in the language of The People. Then he said, “Alright,” in what he hoped was a comforting tone. 

The men in front of them broke rank, then, but did not move far, and as the two walked by, several spat upon them and shouted imprecations, the tenor of which John could only guess by Stone’s sudden stiffness. He thought that if the man could have, he would have pulled away from John altogether, and John felt the full weight of his guilt in this mess crashing down upon him.

All he could do now was walk Stone to Deer Woman Running and wait to see what the outcome would be. 

Woman met him at the door and took Stone from him roughly. Stone only tightened his lips and leaned on her as little as he could. John watched from the doorway, holding the flap open, until Woman growled a dismissal at him and he was forced to walk away.

He returned slowly to the training circle, considering his strategy against several opponents at once and calculating the odds, something he’d grown out of the habit of doing with Rodney around. Now, he found that he missed the physicist’s pessimism, if only because it usually urged John to think of positive variables. This time, John had a feeling that there weren’t many ways that it could work out in his favor, and he hoped that Stone, at least, would come away untouched—beyond what he’d already suffered, of course.

The clearing was empty when John reached it, however, nothing but muddied ground and flecks of blood to prove that there had been a fight there, and so he turned toward the village center, following the tracks of the large crowd. They led to the council lodge, and John saw that the boys of the village were clustered outside the wide double flaps, leaning inward to hear through the heavy leather what was going on within.

When John approached, they moved aside, some of them meeting John’s eyes with defiance, some with support. A few looked away or gave him their backs, and these, John knew, he had probably lost forever. He pushed through the flaps and stood in the doorway, letting his eyes adjust to the dim interior. Silence descended like a suffocating blanket, and only the shifting of bodies on benches told John that any were looking at him.

Once he could see clearly, John took two more steps into the lodge and then stopped. Each time before, he’d been summoned and told where to stand. Now, the chief and council were closed off to him, a circle of benches having been made to form a kind of inner circle. 

John waited, knowing that it was all he could do, and looked around to see Curly, listing heavily but upright, sitting on one of the benches in the inner circle. Several men of his clan turned to give John a collective baleful glare, and he couldn’t help but shiver a little to consider the hatred he saw there. Some of them were men beside whom he’d worked, to say nothing of Curly himself, his mentor in the fighting arts of The People.

He felt something shift in his stomach and wished that he could sit down. Feeling wetness on his cheek, he reached up, remembering simultaneously that he’d been sliced there. He wiped the fresh blood from his face with his shirt sleeve and sought an empty seat. 

There were none.

So he stood, leaning in what he hoped was a casual stance against a support pole for the great beams that held aloft the lodge roof, and tried to calm himself by remembering who he was, really. Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, United States Air Force, Atlantis Expedition. _Easy enough_ , he thought, but visions of his life since coming here, among The People, clouded his clear sight, and a physical memory of last night’s passion made him shift in place and reconsider his identity.

At the best of times, John Sheppard wasn’t a deep thinker. Oh, he was smart enough, alright, and quick-witted, and any of a dozen other adjectives that might describe his ability to think. But self-analysis wasn’t his forte, and truth be told, he avoided introspection like he avoided Beckett’s seemingly arbitrary physicals. Given what he’d survived—and those who hadn’t—in John’s life, the colonel found it the better part of valor to spend as little time inside his own head as possible.

Since coming to the village, however, John had had a lot of time to think, and none of the conclusions he’d come to were exactly simple. John sighed and shifted his feet once again, trying to find a posture that didn’t pull on the muscles of his ribs, which were protesting the hard morning’s use. He’d been babying his ribs since the fall, and now he was paying for that caution with muscles that twinged and ached.

Still, he reflected, he looked a hell of a lot better than Curly, who was turning an unattractive shade of yellow and who punctuated his account of the fight—for John assumed that’s what the man was wheezing on about—with hard coughs that made John wince in sympathy.

Not that he was especially sorry he’d beaten the crap of the other man. That Curly would have killed Stone was a fact of which John had no doubt. That the others would have stood around and watched it was also predominant. John stood away from the pole, angry all over again, and clenched his fists to keep from striding into the circle and shouting at them all to shut the hell up, already.

A voice at his ear said, “Relax,” gruffly, and it made John jump. Obviously, anger made him careless, and that made him angrier—at himself. Leg was beside him, not looking at John but decidedly with him once more.

“What’s going on?” John whispered, ignoring the filthy looks that his whisper earned him from the others.

“Curly is explaining the nature of his challenge to Stone, that Stone committed incest with a member of his clan—you.”

This much, John already knew. “And then what?” he asked.

“Then the council will decide Stone’s just punishment and yours.”

“And what happens to Curly?” John asked, volume rising with his temper. Several nearby men actually held up their hands in a forestalling motion.

“Nothing,” Leg explained, voice inflectionless and flat. “He was within his rights to challenge Stone, and Stone accepted it, despite his injuries. You were the one who violated the rules of the challenge by stepping in. Stone won’t thank you for that. You’ve made him look weak in front of his people.”

“Curly would have killed him,” John noted through clenched teeth. “And you would have let him,” he accused, more angry than he could ever remember being. “What kind of justice is that?”

Leg shrugged and then turned a hard eye to John. “You come among our people and presume to judge us based on your stranger’s ways, Sheppard? Who do you think you are?”

John considered several rejoinders, discarding them all as bitter, until he finally said only, “I think that I’m head of the Clan of the Great Bird until Stone returns to the lodge. That makes me his protector. What do your rules say about that?”

Crooked Leg considered for a long while, eyes ahead but unseeing, and then he nodded once, as if to himself, and limped forward through the inner circle to stand before the council of elders. Curly’s tale had come to a conclusion a few minutes before, and now they were in the silence that came before it was the next person’s turn to speak.

Leg began with a low bow, acknowledging the chief and elders, before he spoke. Then he started an oratory that lasted at least a half an hour. John could tell by the old man’s tone that he was delivering a defense of the most strident variety, putting forth his points with punctuating hand gestures and a series of images that he illustrated with his body language and facial expressions. It was a masterful performance, of which John understood perhaps twenty percent, and when Leg was finished, the gathering of men was utterly silent, so that even the sound of leather on leather as one man brushed against the shoulder of another made a sound too loud in the breathing air.

An eternity passed, during which John lived and died in at least thirteen different ways, building and rebuilding his life based on the council’s reaction. If they condemned Stone to exile, he had sworn to do whatever was necessary to protect the man. If they were both condemned to death, John had decided to take as many of the warriors with him as he could. They might be his adopted people, but he was still Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, and he’d never die as someone else dictated unless he had no choices left.

Feeling stronger in his own skin once again, John waited impatiently for the decision to be handed down. Leg had made his way back to John’s side and stood there in the kind of posture of relaxed vigilance John had seen on riot police the world over. He spread his legs to shoulder width and let his right hand fall near the knife hilt he had kept at his waist. If it came to fighting, he’d be ready, odds be damned.

John heard his name emanate from the circle, saw the men sitting there make way for him, and he stepped forward, not liking that there would be warriors at his back no matter which way he faced. But he saw no way to avoid such a situation, so he squared his shoulders, raised his chin, and looked the chief right in the eye. 

He wondered if he’d be expected to apologize, and if so, for what? For incest? For homosexuality? For loving Stone despite the laws of the tribe?

John’s brain stuttered and then caught up to what was happening around him as that last piece of information was processed and assimilated.

He _loved_ Falling Stone.

_Well, fuck._

But the chief was speaking, and from over the heads of the inner circle, he could hear Crooked Leg translating.

“John Sheppard, you have violated one of the most sacred laws of The People, handed down by La-na-ta-na herself on the First Day, that no two of the same clan should lie together as one, for such a crime brings strife to the lodge.

But because you are new to The People and because you have done good service for us until now, you are to be given a choice. 

You may move your things from the lodge of the Clan of the Great Bird and live as an outcast at the edge of the village with no clan to call your own. 

Or you may join your illicit lover in exile in the far wilds, where he will be sent as soon as he is healed of his wounds.

This is the decision of the Council of the People of the Lake and the Plains. It cannot be reversed.”

John turned blazing eyes upon the chief and took a step forward, letting his hand drift to the hilt once more. They had made a mistake not disarming him when they’d had the chance. He was not going to let them exile Falling Stone from his own people. But his threatening gesture had not gone unnoticed, and suddenly there were six men surrounding him, at some distance but close enough to prevent the violence he’d been contemplating since he’d entered the lodge.

He liked these people, damnit, and he didn’t want to kill anyone. But he wasn’t going to let them leave Stone in the wilderness to die, either. The man didn’t deserve to lose everything for his love.

So it was up to John’s oratorical skills again, and aside from threats that wanted to fall from his lips like thunder, he didn’t know what to say.

What could he say to these men who had so easily dismissed one of their own, one of the strongest among them? What could he tell them that would make a difference, convince them to set aside their stupid law and see the really important things in this situation?

“I love Falling Stone,” he said suddenly and without preamble, hoping that Leg would keep up. John hadn’t known that was what he would say, but once it was said, he felt the better for it. “And I tried…” John’s voice faded here, fleeing from the personal things he was about to reveal. If he hated thinking about his feelings, talking about them was akin to public torture.

“I tried not to touch him. But I tempted him. Stone is a man of honor and duty. He knows the laws and would not have broken them. But he almost died. I held his life in my hands. I watched his blood pour out of him into the earth. I wanted to know that he was really alive, and he…” John let it go, unsure if they would understand, unwilling to risk so much of himself for these people who had so casually cast aside one of their own while keeping him, the unworthy one.

He shook his head, took a deep breath, tried to focus. Looking up, he caught and held the eyes of the old chief. “I love Stone. And I care for Little Bird and Summer and Tall Woman and Winter Sun and Calls-at-Dark. They are Stone’s family and they are my friends. They will not survive without us to aid them. Already the grain grows scarce. The fruit jars are empty and only the meat remains. Sickness will come soon, and with it famine and death. But I can help you all. I can keep the clan—all of the clans—alive.

Let me take a raiding party to the village of the People of the North Woods and get back grain and fruit to replace what they burned. Let me prove to you that I am worthy of your trust. And let Stone stay with his family. Let him lead the Clan of the Great Bird. 

I will be an outcast. You can hate me, spit on me, refuse me your fires and lodges. I will work for you anyway. But do not do this to Falling Stone, who is a good and honorable man. Do not punish him for my love.

Please.”

John hated pleading. He hated feeling beholden. And most of all, he hated pretending that he’d seduced an otherwise unwilling Stone, since it made a mockery of the love he’d only just discovered in himself.

But if it saved the man’s life, John would do it willingly, and more.

The usual silence followed his impassioned plea, and then it was broken by a rising wave of murmuring voices, chief among which were the council, who, with heads together, kept up a steady stream of talk. John relaxed his stance and waited, watching in his mind’s eye a great clock ticking slowly ‘round the face.

John was getting tired of the clock image, he’d decided, when the council broke from its murmured colloquy and the chief raised his voice once more, every word echoed by Leg’s voice at John’s back.

“You have once again shown us that you are not one of The People, John Sheppard, by violating the protocol of the council lodge. But we will overlook your rudeness because you speak to us wise words. We cannot afford to lose a man like Falling Stone when famine is at our very hearths. So we will let him stay if you will lead the raid as you have promised to retrieve what we have lost at the hands of our enemies.

If you are successful in your raid, you will be allowed to remain among us, though without a clan. As an outcast of The People, you have no rights but also share no burdens. Bring us back what you have promised, and all debts are paid. Then you may decide what you will do. If you will go from us, we will see your back with joy and sorrow, both, for as much harm as you have done, you have also done some good. If you will stay, you are free to love whom you will, for no clan will have you.”

As he began to understand the implications of the judgment, John’s eyes lit up with some fierce and unnamable feeling, for he realized that he could have Stone and the People both, without worry, if only he could pull off this raid, and it filled him with a kind of joy he had not thought it possible to feel.

Turning to Leg, he said, “Ask them who among them knows the most about The People of the North Woods. I will need to speak to him. Find out, too, what the weather will be like in the next few days, and see to it that Curly is tended. Tell them that I will continue the training for any who will learn, and that I am looking for a few volunteers—five or six at most—to join me on the raid.”

Leg gave him a dark look and muttered something under his breath. John caught only the word, “Ass.”

He stopped Leg’s turning away with a hand on his arm and said, “I’m sorry, Crooked Leg. I didn’t mean to treat you like a servant. But I can’t ask for what I need—you can. And I need your help if I’m going to pull this thing off. Will you help me?”

Swallowing a smile, Leg pulled his arm out of John’s grip and gruffed something about “arrogance” before turning to the appointed task of information gathering.

The council was breaking up, men moving out into the sun and the day’s work ahead. John followed, walking quickly to the clearing, pleased to find seven boys there waiting for their long-delayed routine. Soon after their final run, John returned to the clearing to find eight men waiting with weapons.

He paused at the edge of the clearing, scanning the faces of these men to determine their purpose. One of them he recognized from Curly’s clan. He let his hand drop casually to the hilt of the knife and spoke The People’s equivalent of “How’s it hanging?”

One of the men stepped forward and offered his hand, which John knew could be a trick. Still, he closed the gap between them and grasped the man’s forearm in the traditional sign of greeting and approval. One by one, the men approached John and mimicked the first man, until it was only Curly’s clansman who waited. He walked up to John and offered his hand, smiling when John accepted it.

He said something low and terse, which John took to mean, “Things are fine.”

And then they began their training in earnest, for it was a real enemy they were soon to face.

If it bothered John that he’d bartered the lives of strangers in a distant village for the people he cared most about in this world, he didn’t think too much about it. Instead, the memory of Stone’s hard expression haunted him, and he worked relentlessly throughout the day, ignoring the idea that he’d given away more than he’d meant to with today’s bargain.

Chapter Sixteen

It was almost dark when they finally broke training for the day, each man staggering off, sweating and tired, to his respective lodge. John found himself standing alone at the edge of the village, unsure of his own destination. He was no longer welcome in the lodge of his clan—his former clan, he corrected inwardly, trying not to admit that it hurt a little to be an ex- in this case—and he wasn’t sure what kind of reception he’d get at the Healing Hut.

Leaving aside the fact that Deer Woman Running had been visibly angry with him, there was the daunting prospect of Falling Stone’s reaction to his earlier behavior. No one had said it outright, but John understood he’d broken The People’s “guy” code; trust John to find the unpleasant universals. 

_Turns out macho in this world is the same as in mine. Too bad it’s also true here that macho sometimes equals stupid._

Of course, it irritated John a lot to consider that Stone would be dead right now had John not interfered—that should count for something. But he knew it didn’t, not really. He’d unmanned the clan leader in front of his warrior brothers, and there was nothing he could say that would make it better.

Finally, though, John had dragged his feet as much as he could. Full dark was approaching, and he was sweaty, cold, and hungry, all conditions that, taken individually, were at least tolerable. Taken together, they were enough to weaken his resolve to avoid Stone and head to the Healing Hut, hoping for the best.

But when John came to a place in the road a few paces from the Hut itself, Crooked Leg was waiting for him with a small bundle and a box that looked familiar. His things.

“Thank you,” he said to Leg, taking the burden from the old man, who turned away, toward the edge of the woods from which John had had his first real look at the village that had become his home. Leg gestured brusquely and walked, not saying a word, his breath coming in stutter-shot bursts of steam, in strange counterpoint to his limping gait.

John followed, a heaviness in the pit of his stomach that he hadn’t felt since he’d been sent to the Commandant’s office his second year at the Academy. Then, it had been over something he hadn’t actually done but for which he’d gladly taken the blame to save another. Now, he was guilty as hell, sort of, and he felt just the same. He guessed it didn’t really matter what the facts were when the consequences amounted to the same: social exile and long, cold nights alone.

The hut was small, smaller even than the Healing Hut, and its door flap was dry and cracked, weights hanging loosely or even missing in places. As Leg held the flap open and gestured inside, John could see that along the walls in places the daubing had come loose and fallen away, and the air inside was frigid. A cold firepit, stones dislodged or split, stood at the center, directly below a crude hole carved in the roof, through which John could see the overhanging bows of a big evergreen. 

There was no pallet platform around the edges of this hut; the pallet itself, moldy mattress mice-chewed and stained—stood to one side, listing over on a broken leg. There was nothing else in the hut—no bucket or ladle, no sink, and, he saw with singular dismay, no privy. 

“Privy?” he asked perfunctorily. It was clear now the nature of his punishment, and John’s temper was wearing thin. It had been too long a day.

“Out back,” Leg grunted. 

“Water?”

“You know where the village well is.”

“But I have nothing to carry it in,” John pointed out, his patience held between gritted teeth, and barely, at that.

Leg shrugged, indicating that it was not his problem.

“Look,” John began, his control slipping, voice a growl. 

But Leg had turned away, letting the flap fall to behind him, bringing home to John that he had no light and no source of light, no fire and no source of fire. 

Then, he remembered the bundle he held, along with the carven chest in which he kept his few clothes and belongings. Opening the soft cloth, which he discovered was a blanket, he found a small clay lamp; a little jar of oil, tightly sealed; a fire flint; a tightly tied bundle of tea leaves; a carved wooden cup, plate, bowl, and spoon; a precious pouch of dried berries; and, the thing that made him pause and take in a deep, deep breath, holding it until he saw sparks behind his eyelids and had to exhale—three stones and a pinecone.

John closed his eyes again, rubbing an absent finger over the stones as he remembered the last time he’d played with Winter Sun and Calls-at-Dark, before he’d hand-fucked their father and started this shitstorm.

Enjoying perhaps the only luxury of his isolation, John swore vociferously and for a long time, using every word he’d ever learned at any base he’d ever been to. When words failed, he carefully put down the bundle and box and began to pace the hut, kicking viciously at clods of spent daub, which exploded in a shower of dust.

When his anger at the situation was finally spent, he went in search of the privy—a thankfully less primitive affair, which had obviously gotten some use recently, since there were leaves for his convenience. Then he gathered firewood and trudged back to his new home. In the daylight, he decided, he’d have a better look at the condition of the walls and see about getting a proper mattress. Maybe he could trade something for it, though what he had that would be of any value to the others, he didn’t know.

For now, he curled up on the hard, dusty wood floor near the firepit, drew the blanket around him, and tried to sleep. It took a long time of staring at the smoke-obscured stars through his roof’s impromptu chimney before he finally drifted off into dreams that all involved running, shooting, and dying.

He was hardly rested when a knock at the doorframe woke him from his disturbed sleep, and John rolled over, staring groggily under his hand, upraised to shield his eyes from the early morning sun pouring in the open doorway.

“What is it?” he asked, unsure of who it was who’d woken him.

Stone said nothing, stepping into the hut and staring about, lip curled up a little, whether in disgust at the conditions of the hut or at John for having earned it as his berth, John couldn’t tell.

The man dropped to a squat beside him where he struggled stiffly to sit upright. His pulled muscles protested and he had to do it in slow stages. 

Stone, he could see, even in the little light that poured through the “chimney” hole, looked like hell. His eyes were both blackened, the flesh around them puffy, and he’d burst a blood vessel in one eye. His nose was swollen and sore-looking, his lip fat at one corner. 

But he was smiling, which John found strange, until the big man leaned forward and pushed John back to the floor, holding him in place for a firm, long kiss that had to hurt, what with the lip and all, but that John did nothing to forestall.

It felt like coming home, and John shivered a little at the realization that that was all it took for him—Stone’s kiss—to make him feel like he belonged.

“What--?” he started to ask, but Stone just shook his head, held a finger to John’s lips, and then handed him a fistful of a-u-mak jerky that he’d had in his belt pouch.

As John chewed, Stone made himself useful, fastening back the flap to let the morning light pour in and producing from outside the hut a broom, a pail and ladle, a mattress, two more blankets, a pot of the grease used to warm the skin, and two or three other things John couldn’t immediately identify. 

If this was the welcome wagon, John decided, watching Stone sweeping away the detritus of the hut’s long disuse, he wanted to get exiled more often. 

He finished the jerky quickly and rose to help his lover clean the hut; then he went to get a pail of water and to barter with one of the village women for a pot in which to boil water for morning tea. No one ignored him, he was glad to discover, and one or two even smiled shyly at him, as though knowing his secret made them sharers of a cute conspiracy. 

From an older woman, widowed, he supposed, he got the pot in trade for a weeks’ worth of firewood, a negotiation made up of one part single-syllable nouns (“wood” and “axe”) and two parts mime. The grey-headed maven led him to a tree just behind her hut, the branches of which tree hung down broken and brown. She indicated by emphatic gesture that this was the wood she wanted, both for warmth and to protect her roof, and John got to work, glad to be useful.

When he’d finished the cutting and stacked the wood neatly nearby, he took his pot and returned to the hut to find Stone gone. In the center of his freshly-made pallet, however, he found a single arrow, beautifully fletched with the bright feathers of some fantastic bird he’d never seen hereabouts before. The arrow pointed toward his pillow, under which he found something that sent a chill through him.

His standard issue 9mil with two clips.

He’d wondered where it had gotten to, figuring it had been left behind with the P-90. 

He handled it gingerly, as though it were a foreign object as likely to explode in his hands as to fit there. Withdrawing the clip that was in the gun, he checked to make sure its full cartridge was there and then reached between his legs to pull the box out from under his bed. He wrapped the gun in the remains of his tee-shirt, alongside his watch, and then wrapped the clips separately in a scrap of soft leather. 

Then he put the box back under his bed, fetched the arrow, and jogged to the clearing to begin morning calisthenics. As he ran with the boys at the end of the workout, he thought about how he could best use the gun and its remaining bullets. Obviously, he’d need it for the coming raid; it would prove a great equalizer and might even prevent violence if he could use it to scare the enemy into submission. Of course, a stealth raid was what they most wanted, but this way, if they came up against opposition, he’d be able to keep things under control.

Too, it would be a handy thing to have if another berserker a-u-mak wandered in from the winter snows and started threatening the villagers. John let his irritation flash and then slide away when he remembered that Stone must have had the gun all along; so much could have been saved if he’d just given it to John to begin with.

Only then did John consider that he might have used the gun to escape, which was the most obvious reason that Stone did not give it to John earlier.

John stopped at the top of the hill, watching the boys race each other breathlessly to the bottom, laughing and shouting good-natured taunts at one another as they went. 

Escape hadn’t been his first or second consideration; it had rated a distant third and had been couched, even in his mind, as a conditional. He “might” have used the gun to escape, not could nor would—might.

Squinting up at the pale sun, John took a cleansing breath and tried to calm his heart, whose racing had nothing to do with the run he’d just made. They’d be wanting him back for afternoon sparring, he knew, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave the hill just yet. He had to think this through.

The gun gave him leverage. He could leave. He could take a hostage, demand the crystals to the DHD, dial Atlantis, and get them to send someone for him. 

Or he could simply threaten the crystal-keeper himself, take him to the ‘gate, and do the same.

By this time tomorrow, he could be on his way to the gate. By this time two days from now, he could be back in Atlantis.

John’s shiver had nothing to do with the cold sweat trickling down his back.

Did he want to go back to Atlantis? Could he? Would it be better for Stone and the rest if John returned to the place from which he’d come?

John shook his head, jogging in place a little to drive off the chill. Deep down, he didn’t want to go, he realized. Some part of him was happy here, maybe a big part of him, all things considered.

_It’s not just your dick talking now_ , John’s little voice said with uncharacteristic solemnity.

John wanted to tell it to get bent, but he knew better. The little voice was usually right. But another part of him felt like he was betraying the people who cared about him back home.

_Or not. Not home._ Atlantis was no longer home, John thought, remembering Stone’s kiss, the way his hand had ghosted across John’s back every time their paths crossed during the morning’s hut-cleaning frenzy.

He belonged here, now. These people needed him, maybe more than Atlantis ever had. And he had made a promise to The People. The raid came first. Then he’d think about leaving.

It wasn’t a solution, John knew, but he also knew that he was tired of thinking about it. Leaving the hill at a lope, he made for the training circle, where they’d work themselves hard to be ready for the raid. Everything that came after it was for another day to decide.

Chapter Seventeen

Three days had passed since John’s exile when a morning came with no breakfast. The day had dawned bright and sunny, and he’d awoken to the sound of snowmelt tapping on his roof like irregular rain, which gave him a chill of foreboding: thaw meant no sledding, and if they had to traverse the eastern end of the lake on foot to get to the enemy, there was very little chance of escaping back to their own village with the volume of grain required to sustain the village. It made the whole mission moot.

He was met by a grim-faced Stone a few minutes later, bringing news about their supply of meat: what was left was not enough to sustain the tribe for two weeks.

So that meant a hunt, which would only delay the raid that much longer. Of course, with the weather uncooperative, John guessed it didn’t matter much, a fact that Leg confirmed when he joined them at the training circle for a brief conference on the crisis.

Instead of his usual calisthenics, then, John led the young men and boys of the tribe on a tramp through the woods in a wide radius around the village, searching for signs of another a-u-mak. The irony didn’t escape John that they were now actively searching out a creature that not too long ago he’d held accountable for a great deal of personal misery.

Still, it didn’t seem to deter Stone, who searched with focus, eyes sharp on the ground and the surrounding undergrowth.

About mid-morning, a shout echoed through the woods to the west of the village, and it was followed by a flurry of activity as nearby warriors flocked to the young man who was standing proudly by a rough-barked tree, pointing to signs of rubbing at what would be shoulder-height for the massive bear they were seeking. Stone affirmed that the sign was fresh, and the young man’s grin grew to an infectious degree. 

Soon, a party of ten was walking swiftly in a southwesterly direction, following the tracks left by the itchy a-u-mak, the sign’s discoverer walking proudly behind the tracker. The party consisted of John, the boy, Larry, and seven members of John’s amorphous training group, all of whom he knew at least by name. None of them seemed upset to be walking with an exile, and John was coming to understand that his status was more ceremonial than actual in nature.

John was feeling more sanguine about his chances up against the beast that they were tracking because he was packing his 9mm in the same satchel he’d carried into captivity with him. He’d consulted Stone before the hunt, asking as well as he could what the protocol was for something like this. They’d decided he could use the gun, but only if it seemed that someone was going to be hurt or the creature was going to escape. 

That John was wearing the leggings of the second-to-last man to be killed by one of these bear things was pretty convincing evidence that extreme force might be necessary.

It wasn’t until mid-afternoon that they finally found fresh scat, the pile still a little warm to the touch. They stood around it, staring down as though it might reveal its secrets. John didn’t know about the others, who might well be able to predict the future from the brown-and-red mess, but he himself knew only that the a-u-mak wasn’t shy about shitting right in the middle of the trail.

That probably should have told him something else about the bear’s attitude.

They had been walking alongside fresh prints in the snow, the massive indentations making John’s stomach do funny things, when they came to an outcropping of rock that rose from the forest floor like a megalith.

At the base of the rock to the north was an opening, made larger by industrious paws, from which came the distinct sound of something snoring. Loudly.

John stared at the hole, willing himself to be able to see into the darkness and make out the lines of the sleeping animal. When that didn’t work, he joined the others, who were standing in a tight circle several healthy yards downwind of the cave entrance. Even here, he could smell the warm, oily stench of the big beast. It was also not comforting.

Larry was speaking and gesturing, and John was struck by just how much it looked like a half-time huddle, but he let it go when he heard one of the others interrupt, something no one else but him had ever done, as far as he knew. The second speaker was Curly’s kin, the one who’d made nice with John in the training clearing after the “trial,” as he’d come to call it in his own head.

Whatever the cousin, Right in the Meeting, was saying, the others were nodding vigorously and looking at Larry as though he had to see reason. John heard only three words he recognized: “surround,” “arrows,” and “claws.” 

The last one he’d learned after Stone’s misadventure. He didn’t want to be using it in sentences again. So he brought out the gun and showed it to the men, explaining through words and a few pointed gestures that it was a very powerful weapon that shot fire from its mouth, and if things got hairy, they were to step aside and let John handle the a-u-mak with it.

A few skeptical grunts followed this pronouncement, but Larry, who had seen John’s P-90, after all, nodded and said something terse and final, which the others seemed to assent to, if not gracefully.

Soon, they were all ranged around the cave opening waiting for the young man to take aim with a well-chosen rock in order to bring the bear out in a hurry. John’s hands were tense on his bow, his arrow already half-drawn, waiting only for the wind-up to bring it up and to full tension.

The boy gunned the rock into the cave, where it made a loud clatter, and an ensuing snuffling grunt indicated that he’d missed the a-u-mak but woken it. A second missile met flesh with a sound thud and a big bellow that bounced off the rock face and the trees around them. The bear burst from the underground opening with lumbering grace. It had its nose in the air, seeking scents, and soon it stopped, sniffing audibly and searching with squinting, sun-blind eyes for the source of the disturbance. Above its left eye, a bright red furrow marked where the stone had struck it in its sleep.

The beast stopped its shuffling long enough to shift to one forepaw, using the other to rub above its eye, smearing blood down its muzzle. 

And then it charged with a speed only John had not suspected it to possess, and the others were scattering, Larry loosing an arrow even before John had brought up his bow. With an uncanny accuracy, the bear had targeted the boy who’d assaulted it and was bearing down on the fleet young man with ferocious intent. Two arrows already stuck from its flanks like exclamation points, but that had not deterred it. A third bounced from the point of its hard head, which slowed it only long enough to shake its massive head and let out another bellow.

John was chasing after it, in no position to get off a good shot with either of his weapons, and he was hoping the boy would turn back toward the cave and the other hunters, giving one of them a good shot.

Even as he thought it, he saw the boy start to turn, saw him slip in the leaves left wet after snowmelt. He was shouting something incoherent as the boy skidded on his side, rolling wildly on the slight incline that led down from the rockface. The bear was gaining ground.

John did the only thing he could think of. He wasted a precious bullet firing into the air in a place roughly over the bear’s big head. He hadn’t had a hope of hitting the bear itself, not without some risk to the boy.

The gunshot had the desired effect. Everyone stopped except the boy, who kept rolling until he hit hard against a fallen tree. Stunned, he stayed there until someone shouted to him, and he staggered up and over the log, out of the line of the bear’s sight.

Meanwhile, the a-u-mak was circling slowly, sniffing the air, no doubt scenting something new—gunpowder—and trying to place the direction of the sound, which was rolling across the landscape like thunder.

Only seconds had passed since the attack had begun. 

John jogged forward, keeping a tree between himself and the beast, knowing his only hope was in hitting it fatally the first time. With the caliber in the 9mil, he’d hardly cause it much harm otherwise, not at this distance. 

And he sure as hell wasn’t going to get up close.

Stalking as near to the still-sniffing creature as he dared, John took aim, holding up his free hand only long enough to signal that everyone should stay put. He saw the boy peeking over the log and waved him back down onto his belly, which the boy did with admirable obedience.

John took a breath to steady himself and sighted down the barrel. As he exhaled, he squeezed the trigger, feeling the familiar pull against his palm as the bullet left the barrel, watching the bear stagger almost simultaneously, a shriek leaving it that made John wince with something like sympathy. 

He’d shot it through the eye, and as the bullet burrowed into the beast’s brain, the a-u-mak stumbled and gave a kind of keening cry that was horrible to hear. Then it keeled over heavily onto one side and lay still, its chest rising once and then falling finally without repeat.

Two others skulked cautiously up to the carcass, poking it with their booted toes to be sure that it was dead. Then one of them looked right at John and beckoned him, pulling a long knife from his belt as he did so.

John hid the gun away in the satchel, taking care to put the safety on, and then approached, taking the offered knife and looking from the man to the bear and back again with a kind of mystified humor. 

His confusion was cleared up right away when Larry said something and prodded the region of the bear’s heart with his boot. The only word John understood was “eat,” but he thought he knew what they wanted.

He shook his head, held up his hands in his best approximation of ignorance, and smiled again, this time more winningly. 

Larry gave a familiar grunt of disgust and took the knife from John, kneeling beside the bear’s still breast and making several slices in its flesh, the hot blood steaming out into the cold afternoon air. Dipping his fingers in the blood, Larry stood once more and indicated that John should stand still. Then he painted lines on John’s face with the blood.

While Larry was doing that, another warrior had taken his place and was working away at the hide of the creature, plunging his knife deep into the wound to produce an organ that John was pretty sure had been a recently beating heart.

This, the man offered to John, still kneeling. For a moment, they stood in a strange tableau, like something he’d seen at the Florida Museum of Natural History, entitled, “Sacrificial Ritual of the Cassekey People.” Then John said, “No,” clearly, and offered it instead to the boy who’d played inadvertent bait for the beast.

The boy’s face lit up in wonder, and he took the heart with shaking hands, bringing it to his lips almost at once and taking a tiny bite. His face came away bathed in blood from chin to nose. John suppressed a shudder and offered an encouraging smile.

The boy passed the heart to the next warrior in line, who likewise took a bite, until it again came around to John. Larry was glaring at him in a pointed fashion when John again accepted the now cool organ. Sighing inwardly, and making a superhuman effort to keep his inward disgust from his face, John bit into the ragged edge of the meat, where it had been torn by other teeth. He let the slippery flesh slide down his throat without touching his tongue and then nodded his head solemnly, as though he had just taken something precious.

He supposed to these men, it was.

Thankfully, someone took the heart from John then, and they all manfully wiped the blood from their faces with their sleeves and got about the work of skinning the bear and dividing up the cuts of meat, for which they’d brought several large satchels the insides of which were waxed with a plant substance that would keep the meat from dripping.

It was nearing dark when they finished the bloody work, and John was anxious to be off. He didn’t relish the thought of carrying the heavy load through the woods on a night when there’d be only a sliver of moon, and they were several hours from the village.

If the others were worried, they didn’t show it, and John tried to take some comfort in that. As it turned out, the hike was uneventful, if tiring, and they arrived at the village to an unexpected—well, unexpected by John, at least—fanfare of waiting women, who took the meat to prepare it for salting and smoking and any of the other ways that they made meat palatable.

The other men and boys of the village were waiting around a blazing fire in the meeting spot, and as John approached, they all stood and gave a loud cheer, taking time to pat him on the back as he walked past. It was kind of an inverse gauntlet, he reflected as he took his seat. Leg sat to one side of him, Stone across the fire, keeping a discreet distance for appearances sake, though John was sure—by the sheer number of winks and nods alone—that no one was fooled by their attempts to act as though they weren’t lovers.

In fact, they weren’t. At least, not in the strictest sense. Since that night in the woods that had gotten them into so much trouble, they were somewhat shy of one another, as though privacy alone predicated sex and neither wanted to be the one to bring it up. Stone would kiss John passionately, but if John responded, raising his hands to weave them through Stone’s long hair, for example, the tall man would pull away, breathless and laughing, and look for something else to occupy himself.

John didn’t know what to make of it and wondered if he were supposed to pursue Stone or just let it go. He puzzled over this, staring across the fire at his lover, who was laughing at something Sly Rabbit was saying. Sly Rabbit, it turned out, was the name of the boy who had found the a-u-mak trace and faced it down earlier that day…or rather, yesterday, John thought, stifling a yawn.

He rose from the fire an hour after their return, bleary-eyed with exhaustion and itching from the blood that had dried and flaked on his face. He’d been afraid that there might be more raw meat involved in the ritual of thanksgiving they were apparently undertaking here, but it turned out that they only had to hold their hands up and chant a few words to the Ancestors before turning to tall tales of other hunts, bigger bears, more fantastic feats.

John made his solitary way through the village to his lonely little hut, having slipped into the shadows beyond the fire’s long light without anyone seeing him go. He heard the sound of women working, singing a bright song over their labors, to the west of the street where he now walked. The stars above were bright, even more numerous on this nearly moonless night, and he wished for a minute that Teyla were there to share the night sky with him. She had always been pointing out constellations and sharing with John their special names and the stories that went with them.

With a pang, he realized it was the first time he’d thought of Teyla in days.

Shaking off the melancholy that threatened to overtake him, John entered his hut, started a small fire to heat the icy air, stripped off his soiled clothes, bathed his face free of blood, and climbed into his comfortable bed.

He drifted off to the distant sounds of many men singing.

Chapter Eighteen

He wasn’t sure what awoke him, but he was upright on the pallet, listening hard in the darkness, as his breath fogged the air around him. The fire had died to embers, and he could make out little in what scant starlight filtered through the chimney hole at the top of the hut.

He widened his eyes, as though that could make out heretofore unseen shapes, and then a movement near the door caught his attention, and he thought to find the holes in the door flap, through which he should see gradients of light.

He could see nothing of them, which meant that there was someone between John and the door.

His right hand slid beneath his pillow and fastened on the knife that he kept sheathed there whenever he slept.

“Who’s there?” he asked in roughly the right way of The People. In fact, he’d left out the verb, but he figured that the intruder would get the idea.

John sensed movement and rolled from the pallet, making for as low a profile as possible. In the same motion, he unsheathed the knife, and then he waited.

Another movement and then a crashing sound, as of something fragile breaking and which he thought must be the water jar he’d had by the fireplace in case of stray sparks setting something alight. 

John threw himself at the intruder, tackling him, and they rolled to within inches of the still-warm hearth, John on top, knife brandished, but with care. He didn’t want to kill anyone until he knew who it was.

Then he heard a familiar voice slur his name.

“Stone?” John asked, irritation making him a little sharp. “What in the hell are you doing sneaking around? It’s a good way to get yourself killed!” 

Levering himself up, John sheathed the knife and set it aside and then felt his way to the firewood basket and found some tinder, which he placed on the orange embers and blew to life. The sudden flare of light revealed Stone’s face, a sly smile tugging at the corner of his lips. He was enjoying his little prank, John realized.

Putting more wood on the slowly growing fire, John considered Stone’s presence in his hut at this time of night. Now that he was focused on more than just detecting an intruder, he could hear that the women were still working, their voices a distant, lulling noise.

So Tall Woman was probably not coming back to the lodge for the night. And Stone would be expected to party until the dawn with his pals.

Considering the stars visible through the chimney hole, John realized he’d only been asleep for a short time.

That it took him that long to figure out why Stone had come to the hut obviously frustrated the warrior, for he made a sort of guttural noise in the back of his throat that might have been derision and then reached for John as the latter man passed him again to get more wood. 

Since Stone was still lounging on the furs by the firepit—furs he’d brought himself only the day before—John fell into his lap with a startled, “Oof!” Wood went everywhere, though John hardly cared, for Stone’s large hand was warm at the back of his neck, drawing John forward into a searing kiss that left him lightheaded with need of air.

John pulled away to look into Stone’s shining eyes, and the man leaned into him again, this time nipping at John’s jawline, leaving tiny, wet imprints of his teeth along John’s neck and down to his collarbone, exposed by the loose cut of the shift he wore to bed.

One of Stone’s hands ghosted up the inside of John’s thigh, under the shift’s rucked-up edge, up until the backs of his fingers brushed John’s half-hard length. John moaned and swallowed hard as Stone’s hand wrapped around him and stroked him to fullness with rough, ready movements.

John’s hips bucked upward, and Stone shifted John out of his lap and onto the floor, where he stretched out beside John and continued his insistent rhythm. 

John stopped him, and Stone gave him a querying look, a look cleared up when John moved his hand to the big man’s obvious erection and made to undo the laces that held his leggings in place.

Stone brushed John’s hands off, stood, and made quick work of shirt and leggings, toeing off his boots in the process. Then he stood there for a long moment, long legs burnished by the firelight, his shaft jutting outward from his body, hands flexing and loosening slightly, as though he were eager to use them.

Then he stepped between John’s legs, nudging them wider with his feet, and knelt between his lover’s upthrust knees, lowering himself slowly onto his hands, which bracketed John’s head, until with a dip of his hips he was rubbing against John’s length.

“Ah, god!” John cried, thrusting upward. Stone whispered something and returned the motion until they were moving in the timeless and universal rhythm.

John was close—so close—Stone’s names a constant mantra on his lips—when the bigger man stopped above him, out of contact.

He may have whined—though John would never admit it—and Stone laughed, a low laugh like a pirate who is certain of his prize in the pillaging. The sound made John writhe in the search for contact. He thought that his heart might stop.

Then Stone lowered all of his weight onto John and whispered something broken into his ear.

John’s eyes widened and he might have choked a little on his reply, but the pot was ready to hand with the grease they used to warm themselves, and Stone’s fingers were slick with it as they came away, and soon they were inside of John, who was trying hard not to whine for real this time— _fuck, it’s been a long time,_ he thought, trying to breathe through the pain of it. Pressing back on the fingers, he breathed in, and suddenly he was full in a different way than the pain and he could breathe freely and it was good.

Then Stone curled his fingers just so and John couldn’t help the cry that came from him, broken and babbling words in English and in Stone’s language, words that meant nothing and everything and then there was blunt-hot-hard filling him and he wanted to scream and then Stone was in him and John did scream, rising up to meet Stone’s hard thrusts, not gentle now or patient or careful, and they were panting harsh breaths in time to their thrusts. 

Stone took his weight on one hand and reached between them, wrapping those wet fingers around John and stroking him once, twice rough-fast-friction and then John shouted his release, feeling the scalding come strike his belly, slicking Stone’s still-pumping fist.

Stone gave a shout and thrust fiercely and then stilled with his balls against John’s buttocks, both arms shaking, head up, throat a long expanse of corded muscle as he came and came and came.

John might have closed his eyes against the intensity of feeling that overcame him in that moment, for it was only when Falling Stone pulled himself from him with an audible sigh that John opened them again, unsure suddenly what he would see.

Stone was staring down at him with a look of mingled wonder and victory, as though he couldn’t quite believe he’d just won such a treasure, and John couldn’t help but smile back goofily, his grin a permanent fixture, he thought, now that he’d been so thoroughly debauched by the man he loved.

He could feel the semen seeping from him in a cold trickle, feel as he shifted under Stone the clammy grease between his cheeks, and he didn’t care at all. He’d sleep in the wet spot for the rest of his life if it meant having the joy of being had in that manner.

Stone slid to the side, slipping an arm under John’s head and drawing him in, pulling one of the furs over them as he did so. This way they fell asleep, John’s head at the joining of Stone’s strong arm, one hairy leg slung over Stone’s smooth one.

John didn’t dream that night.

In the hour just before dawn, there was a tap at the doorframe, and John awoke muzzily, feeling warm and safe in a way that he hadn’t remembered feeling in many, many years. Leg peeked his barely visible head in to say, “Get up!”

John rolled out of Stone’s embrace even as the warrior rose and wrapped a fur around his waist. John, with considerably less elegance, grabbed his shift and shrugged it over his head. 

“The sickness has come,” Leg announced without preamble, stepping into the hut. “Your clan needs you, Falling Stone.”

John gave Leg an alarmed look, and then his eyes went to Falling Stone, who was standing with an unnatural rigidity, eyes fixed on a place beyond Leg’s sharp gaze.

“What is it?” John demanded, struggling into his leggings and retrieving his shirt from where he’d hung it to air out after yesterday’s hunt.

“Leg?”

But Crooked Leg only looked at John, saying nothing. His face gave nothing away—neither disapproval nor disgust—nothing that John could use to gauge his pronouncement.

“Is it the children? Did something happen?”

Leg only continued to stare as Stone climbed mechanically into his clothes, not looking at John.

“Crooked Leg, please tell me!”

Finally, the old man shook his head. “Summer is sick.”

John felt something in the region of his heart give way. “What?” he whispered, and then he swallowed the lump that was forming there and repeated himself.

“What can I do?” 

Leg shook his head, suddenly looking every day of his advanced age. “There is no fruit, no grain. Little Bird cannot feed her and the other mothers in the village have barely enough to feed their own. The last time, it was the little ones who died first.”

There was in Leg’s voice an element of the predetermined, of horror revisited and, so, familiar, and John was suddenly angry.

“There has to be something we can do!” he stormed, even as Falling Stone brushed past him to leave the hut. He kept going, right past Crooked Leg, who half-turned toward the flap to leave himself.

“Wait!” John said, desperation replacing anger in his voice. The cold weight in his stomach spread dread throughout and his breath came short. “Wait,” he said in a softer voice. “Please, Leg. There has to be something I can do.”

“You can pray,” he said tonelessly, pulling the flap aside. “And leave Stone to his clan.”

John felt Leg’s last words like a blow, and he stopped following the old man, sagging onto a bench beside his door.

The tops of the trees were just edged in grey; it wasn’t even dawn, really. John wondered if dawn would ever come again for some of the children now sleeping in the village and then pushed aside the useless, maudlin thought.

He couldn’t just watch the village children succumb one by one to the kind of sickness that came with an all-meat diet. There had to be something he could do for them. 

The air was cold but not frigid, John noted, which meant that the raid was still some days off, after the next cold spell had had a chance to work on the ice. Until then, there was no rescue from that quarter.

He discarded next the meaningless possibility of rescue from above. If the Daedalus hadn’t beamed him aboard weeks ago, just after his capture, there was little likelihood that they would do so now. He’d long since given up hoping that a team would take him away; in fact, the idea filled him with uneasiness now.

Shaking his head sharply to ward off the darkness that came when he thought of Atlantis, John rose from the bench and started walking toward the village, hoping to help in whatever way he could. But as he reached the first huts, he saw at the door to every lodge a woman standing sentinel, her face a mask of sorrow, turned toward the lodge where illness had struck first and hardest, toward what had been his lodge only days ago.

John walked faster, worried now at the suffocating silence in the street, at the expressions on the faces of those he passed.

Soon, he came to the lodge of the Clan of the Great Bird, and he saw that the flap was pulled back, fastened aside to let in the pale dawn light. Standing to one side of the doorway was Crooked Leg, his back more bent than usual, face turned strangely toward the rough bark of the exterior lodge wall.

Then Tall Woman came out, tears streaming down her normally expressionless face, followed by a solemn-faced Winter Sun, holding his little sister by the hand. Calls-at-Dark was crying, too, but her sobs were not silent; instead came hiccups and little sighs. They all saw him but did not acknowledge his presence, and he felt like that like another blow as a cold hand squeezed around his heart.

Finally, Falling Stone came out, his face etched in deep lines, like a granite carving of sorrow. He stood in the doorway and began to sing, his voice soft at first and then gaining in volume as he went on. John heard the verse repeated throughout the village, from one lodge to the next, until every man, it seemed, was singing.

It was a simple tune, only a few notes in total, but together it made a kind of lament, or maybe it was a prayer. John didn’t know, but it seemed quite clear that something awful had happened in the lodge.

He saw Little Bird walk to the door, and even with the shadows cast by the interior darkness, he could see that she had aged far beyond her sixteen slim years. She was not crying; she was dry-cheeked, but her eyes glistened and flashed from the darkness.

And when she opened her mouth, out came a keening that spoke of the unspeakable sorrow of motherhood, of the history of those who have buried their children, and John choked and stumbled back and away, recognizing that he did not belong, that though he had not brought this on them, he was yet a harbinger of their most personal disasters.

He knew it was irrational, knew he’d only imagined the accusation in Little Bird’s no-longer-laughing features, but he couldn’t shake the sense that he had somehow engineered the disaster that had befallen them all.

John found himself after some time standing on the hill where he and Stone had first kissed, a kiss that had culminated in last night’s passion. _Could it have been only hours ago?_ John wondered to himself, sitting down suddenly on the exposed rock at the top of the hill.

Helpless and without hope, he sat there for a long, long time, imagining the things that Beckett could do for these people, the things the botanists could plant, hell, the planets to which they could be relocated for a more comfortable and fertile climate.

_But short of a miracle, none of that is going to happen,_ John thought. 

And then, he had an idea.

Chapter Nineteen

He attended the funeral ritual first, as the red of a violent dawn burst broad across the dark sky, bringing a cold, grey day of high wind and the scent of snow. 

The People sang, something low, murmuring, like wind in the winter trees, and then their voices rose to a single, keening note of anguish, which they held as the little body was given to the flames of the pyre, built in a special spot to the south of the village, in a place that John had never seen before.

Little Bird kept her head up, eyes on the fire, watching the tiny bundle gather fire, and John himself couldn’t tear his eyes from Summer’s still form, wishing that he could look anywhere but there, wishing he could clear his memory of her giggles and the smile that gathered her features into a ray of light in the dimness of the lodge.

Stone stood beside Tall Woman, one hand on the head of Winter Sun, the other on Little Bird in a show of clan solidarity and brotherly affection.

After, there was to be a feast, which was too ironic for John to stomach. He gathered his scant pack and met Crooked Leg, who had agreed to give him directions to the Temple.

“You will not make it,” Leg reiterated, impatience coloring what was obviously a familiar refrain.

“I have to try, Leg,” John said, strangely grateful that the man was back to being just gruff with John. 

Leg’s snort was eloquent. He handed John a piece of bark, inside of which was scribed in deep, burnt coal a map. The village was a cluster of tiny squares, the mountains enormous triangles, the place he wished to travel dwarfed by the mountains and ominous in the shadow of a single word, writ large, which John knew well enough in any language: “Danger.”

“If she will not see you, what will you do then?” Leg asked, also not for the first time.

John shrugged. “I’ll make her see me.” Sensing a shift in the wind, knowing that it harbingered snow, John picked up his pack, with its scant provisions, carefully covered gun, single clip, and slipped into it.

“Ah…” he started, unsure of how to finish. “Tell Stone…” 

_Tell him what? That I’ve finally gotten the balls up to do what I should have done to begin with? That I’m sorry I failed Summer? That I’d do it all again if it meant having his hand on me like last night?_

John shrugged again, this time in irritation with himself and impatience to be gone. He turned to go, but Leg’s hand on his elbow stopped him.

“It’s not your fault,” Leg said, gruffness edged with something else, something too dangerously close to sympathy for John to stand.

John pulled away from Leg’s halting hand and shrugged a third time, defensively. Then he made for the trail that led to the Southwest, toward the mountains and the promise of the Temple of La-na-ta-na beyond.

It turned out to be an anti-climactic journey.

He’d gone three clicks from the village when his growing suspicions were rewarded with a glimpse of a lithe, leather-clad form flitting through the woods to the west of his position. It stopped when John did. When John made to move forward, so did the figure.

Finally, John spread his hands wide and said, “Why don’t you just come over here and walk with me?”

The figure froze and started to turn away.

“Wait!” John called in the language of The People.

Whoever it was stopped, turned back toward John. 

John said, carefully, “Please, speak me” and beckoned the person forward with an open palm. If his words were poor, at least the gesture was eloquent.

The boy came then, and John knew him. It was the one John had seen at the clearing where he trained, the one he’d thought was a scout for the enemy.

“Who are you?” he asked, keeping his voice even. The boy had stopped perhaps six feet away and stood with an eerie stillness that somewhat unnerved John. “What do you want?”

And then John got it. Maybe it was a shift in the boy’s stance or something about his eyes, but John knew.

“You’re La-na-ta-na, the Ascended one who brought The People to this planet.”

The “boy” studied John, tilting his head to one side, but there was in his eyes a brightness, almost amusement, that belied his serious study. 

Then, with the merest incline of his head, he acknowledged that John was right.

“You are the one they call Shay-ah-par, who came through the Ring from Atlantis,” he said. The boy had a high, light voice, fine but with a lilt, like an accent long forgotten, or perhaps like the words were alien to his tongue.

“Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard,” John said, though the words felt like a lie. He’d been “Shay-ah-par” for a long while now. “Of the Atlantis Expedition.”

He didn’t add that he was formerly of Earth. Personal experience with Ascended beings aside, John wasn’t going to trust just anyone with that information.

“I know who you are.” If he tried even a little, John could hear a threat there, but he kept his eyes steady on the boy, though he wasn’t fooled by the youthful exterior into believing the being couldn’t harm him.

“Then you know why I was coming to find you,” John said, keeping his voice even.

The boy merely inclined his head again, in a manner that John found was slightly more condescending than he liked. Like the boy was granting him audience with something like patience.

John tried to avoid letting his irritation seep into his voice.

“You don’t look like what I expected,” he observed, wondering how much inanity he could pack into the conversation before La-na-ta-na tired of the tango and came out with what he wanted. 

In a single, involuntary blink of John’s eyes, the boy changed, so quickly that he did not see any signs of it, no chins sliding into place or hair settling in a supernatural wind. Neither was it wet and goopy, like the werewolf films invariably depicted.

Nope, the woman standing before him was decidedly goop-free, sporting an expression of superior patience that annoyed the shit out of him.

This time, John didn’t keep it out of his voice when he said, “Why haven’t you helped them? They’re your people, aren’t they?” 

So much for small talk.

The woman before him was tall, taller than John by an inch or more, with ginger hair and tan skin, eyes the color of deep water in a churning storm. She looked…sculpted, inhuman…and as she opened her perfect lips to answer, John had to bite back on the shudder that came up from his core.

“They wanted a simple life, one without the choices that advancement brings. They cannot have some things for comfort’s sake but eschew others for their danger.”

She spoke as if to a very small child, one she didn’t like much, and John felt a little better. He liked hostile a lot better than supercilious.

“So you just let them die of starvation?” 

“I have done nothing to contribute to their current circumstances. They chose to make an enemy of the People of the Northern Woods, and they must suffer the consequences of that choice.”

“You’re telling me,” John asked, “that they fled their war-torn homeland in favor of a peaceful life of retrogression and then turned around and started a war?” If he sounded like he was calling her a liar, he didn’t much care.

She merely nodded again, and he was beginning to think he might have to slap her just to knock that all-knowing, all-seeing look off of her face.

“You had nothing to do with relocating them to a planet already occupied by a warlike tribe?”

There. A slight shifting in her expression, like she’d smelled something foul but had too many manners to acknowledge it openly.

“You miscalculated,” he crowed, leaping into the silence that had fallen between them. “But it was too late when you realized, and…”

“We did not have much time. The Wraith were nearly upon the city when we fled. I had no choice. This planet had been scouted as a Delta site, I believe you would say.”

“Then you’re not so infallible, after all, are you?”

John hadn’t needed proof that the Ascended were fallible; he’d known that from SG-1 mission reports and his own regrettable experiences. But it was vindicating, somehow, to recognize that this patronizing…woman…was capable of being wrong and that he’d forced her to admit it. Of course, that didn’t help his people any.

“So if you miscalculated on that point, don’t you think you have a responsibility to protect them from the ravages of their enemies? You brought them to an already-occupied planet, after all. You can’t blame the natives for getting squirrelly over your little invasion.”

Her face shifted, turning to stone, unbending and ugly, and he was tempted to take a step back, remembering the power he’d felt in Chaya when they’d shared spirits. He stood his ground, though, also remembering Little Bird’s own immobile features as she watched her baby’s body burn.

“I cannot interfere. They made their choice long ago. What is done is done. Death comes to all of their kind,” she added, just the kind of spiritual claptrap John found most annoying and least helpful.

“Bullshit,” he said succinctly. “You got them into this, you have a responsibility to see to it that they survive. I’m not asking you to vanquish the foe, here. I just want you to help them find food until the spring, when we can plant crops and harvest early roots and berries. The water shoots will be high enough by the Moon of the Red Fruit Blossom to make a decent salad. If we can just make it until then…”

“You cannot, John Sheppard,” she answered, giving him a look that pinned him in place.

He returned it, glaring, and waited for her to continue. He’d be damned if he’d ask her what she meant; he wasn’t playing any of her games.

“You do not belong among The People. You bring advanced weapons,” and she looked pointedly at the gun on his hip, “and alien ways. You sow discord and reap bad feeling, even in your own clan. You are an outsider, John Sheppard. You must go.”

John wanted to argue. On one level, he knew that she was wrong, dead wrong. He hadn’t asked to be brought to this primitive place, to live as he had been living, but now that he’d made a home among The People, he was reluctant to leave them, and he was sure that he’d done his share of good, the Clan of the Great Bird and its intrigues notwithstanding. 

On the other hand, things hadn’t gone well for Stone and his family since John had joined them, though he hardly thought that he could be blamed for the famine, since he’d been confined to a cot at the time the raid that had destroyed their stores had occurred.

Of course, he had nearly gotten Stone exiled. And he was trying really hard not to think about the a-u-mak attack.

She waited, an implacable force, like the tide moving immutably against the city’s sides back on Atlantis. Funny that he would think of the city now, just when he was deciding his fate, the suspiration of waves making a sighing sound in his mind.

He felt the insidious fingers of doubt creep in, then, and he gave her a dark look. “Get out of my head,” he growled, stepping toward her.

She was gone. No blaze of light, no shimmer or shower of sparks. Just gone, vanished.

He felt her behind him and spun, stepping back, his hand going to his belt, where the knife rested in its snug, hand-carved sheath.

The gun didn’t occur to him until she’d taken it away, and then only because he missed the weight.

His hand was empty, too.

“If you go,” she said, as though their conversation had not been interrupted, “I will help The People.”

John shrugged, gave a nasty laugh. “I can’t go, remember? I thought you were supposed to know everything that happened among The People. You must know that I don’t have access to the ‘gate, and obviously, no Atlantis teams have gotten through to me.”

A smile slipped over her lips like an ill-fitting dress, and John narrowed his eyes.

“Your doing, I take it.” It wasn’t a question, and she didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “When it comes time for you to leave, you will know it, and you will be able to go. If you do not leave willingly, you will still go.”

And there was no doubt about her threat that time.

“I thought you couldn’t interfere in the lives of The People.” It was a sneer, and he was glad for it. There was something sticky and black climbing up his throat, and he wanted it to spew out of him all over her perfect white dress.

“For this, I will make an exception, and I am sure the Others will allow it, as well. You are not a favorite among us,” she added, voice like a boring footnote.

His grin turned feral. “Well, the feeling’s mutual, then.” Still, he did not give her an answer. He supposed it was a good bargain: The People would survive the winter with fewer deaths, and he himself would return to Atlantis to continue the mission.

Whatever was caught in his throat at the thought of Stone was not dark and ugly, but it choked him, still.

Swallowing hard, John nodded, cleared his throat, and said, “Deal.”

She didn’t even bother to nod this time, merely stepping toward him, instead, in her outstretched hand a small piece of rolled parchment, tied with a strand of dried grass.

“Go back to the village. Get some men. Follow this map, and dig where indicated. You will find plenty of food for the winter months to come.”

He took the map with a hand he was proud to find steady, for there was a vice-grip on his heart that made it hard to breathe. He’d just given away Stone, his life here, the children…all of it. 

Staring hard at the map, not wanting to open it in the childish hope that if he gave it back now, it wouldn’t count, John said, “When will I be going?”

Silence answered him, and then light wind high in the bare trees above.

She was gone.

Chapter Twenty

When John arrived back at the village not two hours after he’d left, he discovered that he’d missed something rather important: Stone’s departure.

“What happened to the feast?” was John’s first—admittedly inane—question to Crooked Leg, who delivered the news. His second was a more forlorn, “Where did he go?”

Falling Stone had taken a small raiding party to traverse the east end of the lake and steal what they could from the People of the Northern Woods. It was a dangerous mission to begin with, made more so by the distance they had to travel and the likelihood of capture on the return trail. Because of the recent unseasonable temperatures, the ice on the lake itself couldn’t be trusted. 

As if in mockery of John’s creeping worry, flakes began to fall from the iron grey sky overhead and the wind picked up, clattering in the bare branches of the trees around the village.

John stood for several minutes trying to overcome the icy dread that was coiling around his belly and up into his chest. Then he told Leg what had transpired in the woods to the southwest of the village and asked him to gather a party of men to gather the promised supplies.

Leg gave John a quizzical look, and John had to say, “I’m not crazy!” twice before the old man walked off toward the Chief’s lodge to inform him of the developments and plead on behalf of John. Since the latter was technically an outcast, he had no right to an audience with the council of elders.

It was almost dusk when Leg emerged from the council lodge, and by then, the ground was covered in four or five inches of light, fluffy snow. The air was frigid with cold, and the snow that packed beneath his boots crunched in a way that reminded John painfully of his first day on the planet.

The day he’d met Stone.

The day his life had changed.

Shaking his head at his foolishness—feelings weren’t going to get him anywhere, and he had a job to do—John examined Leg’s face as the old man approached, trying to divine the council’s answer based on Leg’s expression. As usual, though, the twisted features told him nothing.

“Okay,” was all the man said as he passed right by where John stood, moving steadily, if slowly, in the direction of the Healing Hut. 

“Okay?” John echoed, wondering what it meant that Leg didn’t slow down.

“You can take the boys you’ve been training and three of the men you’ve worked with. The others are either with Stone or have refused to go with you. They think you’re crazy.”

Leg’s tone suggested he might agree with them.

“Where are you going in such a hurry?” John asked, jogging to catch up to Leg’s retreating figure.

“Woman is sick,” he said shortly, not sparing a look at John. 

In the dim afternoon light, all that John could see in Leg’s profile were shadows.

“Can I do something to help?” John asked, feeling superfluous. What could he have to offer the village healer, the very woman who’d kept him alive during his own terrible sickness?

Leg merely shook his head and made a half-hearted shooing gesture with his hand. “Go eat. Rest. The place you describe is some distance from here. You’ll need to start before dawn, assuming the snow lets up. They’ll meet you in the training field two hours before light.”

John slowed, letting Leg steam away in the direction of the ailing healer. “We’ll bring her back some roots for soup,” John thought to call after him. Leg didn’t react.

The night passed slowly; it was the first that John had spent alone in his hut since the night that Stone had come to him…had it been only days ago? John felt old, with a weight of years that mere chronology couldn’t account for. The stillness of the world outside, muffled in cold snow, made him restless. 

He tried not to think about Stone and the raiding party, who were spending a freezing night huddled under hides and furs, pressed close to conserve body heat. The twinge of jealousy that zinged through him at the thought of Stone wrapped in someone else’s arms only made John feel guilty, and he finally went to bed just for something to do.

Sleep was elusive and fickle. When it came, it was disturbed by dim dreams whose fleeting edges he caught but could not hold, except to know that they were upsetting. He got up before it was time, managed to choke down some a-u-mak jerky, and prepped his satchel, putting inside only his gun and some scraps of jerky: hopefully, he’d need the rest of the satchel to carry food back to The People. 

They’d have sleds and dogs, too, which encouraged him. For a second, a strange memory filtered through to his conscious mind: a cartoon sleigh mounded with colored sacks and pulled by a hapless hound hampered with sawn-off antlers. Strange what sleeplessness could bring to mind. 

He was first to the training clearing, and he waited, stamping his feet to keep them from freezing, rubbing his hands briskly in his fur mittens, waiting for the heating grease to do its job. His breath was a solid trail of grey against the starlit sky, and every inhalation of the too-dry, frigid air made him wince.

It was fucking cold.

Eventually, his party began showing up, in ones and twos, rubbing the sleepiness from their eyes with gloved hands. They were surly with the hour and the cold, and no one spoke much, instead milling around in the seven or so inches of snow and awaiting their comrades with ill-disguised impatience.

At last, Curly appeared with two teams of four dogs each and two long sleds on cleverly bent hardwood runners, and they were ready.

The journey was difficult, for the snow had drifted and the rising of the sun brought with it a sharp wind that sliced through their layered clothes and dried the sweat of their trudging efforts to their skin. Their exposed faces glowed an angry red, and John wondered if he’d ever be able to smile again, so stiff did his lips feel. He had to keep reminding himself not to lick them.

Finally, though, after three hours of trudging, the dogs let out little yips of recognition and they made out several low wooden structures, arranged in a half-circle around a central firepit. The roofs of two of the huts were stoved in by downed limbs; a third was leaning hard left, as though yearning to lie down in the soft, cold snow. The other three were more or less intact, though the thin hide of the door flaps was chewed as high up as a big mouse could reach, John noted.

“What is it?” John tried, hoping he’d be understood. 

Curly responded with a string of words, face obscured by his own breath. John caught enough of them to know that it was a fall hunting camp, apparently forgotten.

One of the other men moved forward toward the firepit, which was large enough in circumference that John could have laid down in it and had room to stretch. There were the scattered remains of what had once been a neatly arranged square fire, John noted, and these the man—Asks the Trees—moved away, two boys hustling forward eagerly to help.

When the wide space was cleared, another man, Swimming Bird, crouched in the circle and began brushing away the snow. Soon, it became clear to John that they were searching for the edges of something, and when they found a straight line beneath the snow and packed earth, he came forward himself to help, offering his knife blade as a fulcrum.

Catching the lip of the cover with the knife, Trees indicated that everyone should step out of the circle. Then, he pried the cover upward. Snow and debris showered down into the dark space beneath the heavy wooden cover, which John helped Trees move off of the opening and to one side of the circle.

Then he crouched with everyone else to peer into the dark space that the board’s removal had revealed.

Someone lit an oil lamp and lowered it into the space.

There were hide-wrapped parcels of various shapes and sizes; several clay jars, their wide mouths still visibly sealed with yellowed wax; and a number of boxes covered tightly in oiled hides. Hands shaking, Curly reached down to raise one of the parcels, bringing it up almost reverently—or as though he feared that it might disappear.

He brushed a space clear of snow between himself and Trees and then shucked his mittens to undo the thin strips of leather that held the parcel closed. What he saw inside made his face light up with something far more bright than windburn, and he turned a wide smile to John and the others, saying, “Grain!” in his language and lifting up a handful of the golden stuff to let it sift back down into the bag.

“No grubs,” Swimming Bird said, examining the cereal more closely. 

As though his observation had broken some long-held tension, the boys began to bustle, reaching quick hands down into the hole to bring up parcel after box after jar. Each was carefully checked for content and quality, resealed, and loaded with a care that was painful to witness onto one of the two sleds. Even the dogs stood still, as though recognizing their great responsibility.

When the hole was empty of every last object, Curly called for the cover to be replaced, and they all did their best to make it look as though nothing had ever happened, for it wouldn’t do to let some passing enemy know of their method of storing food for emergencies.

John’s translating skills weren’t strong enough to understand everything that had been said while the work went on, but he had gathered enough to understand that the little camp had once been temporary home to hunters of The People who had gone out in the late autumn to hunt whatever game they could find. This was, apparently, when The People’s village had been closer to the lake and to their current location. Once the village had been moved, the camp had fallen into disuse, and the People had forgotten what stores they’d left there for emergencies.

“Enough?” John asked Curly, and the man’s smile was all the answer John needed. He nodded, more to himself than the other man, and tried to smile in return. After all, this was good news.

But a part of John had hoped there’d be nothing at the place where La-na-ta-na had indicated on the map. He’d selfishly found himself wishing that she’d been wrong, but the food sealed his fate: he was going back to Atlantis.

None in the company felt the cold on the return journey, warmed as they were by their success. Only John shivered, but it was ice on the inside that made him cold.

They were greeted with a hero’s welcome, every healthy villager pouring excitedly into the street, shouting and singing snatches of victory songs about foes vanquished and peace restored. John supposed that it helped them to personify death, especially when it came in the form of implacable and invisible starvation, but he felt vaguely uneasy at the warlike words, and he retired to his hut early, stopping only long enough at the Healing Hut to tell Leg, who hadn’t been at the impromptu parade, that they’d been successful on their mission.

The old man was drowsing on a stool beside Woman’s cot, and it was her bright eyes that greeted him first before Leg startled awake and rose stiffly to his feet. 

“Food’s here,” John said. “There are roots and grains and other things—spices, dried fruits. There’s enough for the winter.” 

Leg said, “Good,” gruffly, and Woman cuffed him on the back of the thigh nearest her. 

“Thank you,” she said, her voice weak but her words clear. “Thank you.”

“I’ll bring you some broth,” John added, moving to pick up Woman’s cooking pot. Leg intercepted him. “I’ll do it.”

“Okay,” John said, letting his confusion sift into his voice. Leg wasn’t acting right.

When the man checked him with a shoulder brusquely on the way out of the Healing Hut, John knew his instincts were accurate.

“What’s the deal?” he asked without preamble. 

“Deal?” Leg said stiffly, pretending ignorance of that particular colloquialism, which John had taken care to teach him months ago.

“Don’t play games with me, Leg. What’s your problem with me? Why are you acting so…weird?”

Leg rounded on him, and John saw a kind of anger there that he’d never imagined he’d find in Leg. Bitterness, sure. Gruffness, naturally. But there was in Leg’s face a hatred so pure that it made John take an unconscious step back.

“I don’t have a problem with you, Sheppard. We do. The People. All of us. You don’t belong here. You’ve brought nothing but death with you since you came here.”

John was stunned; he knew that Leg was disappointed with John for John’s weakness where Stone was concerned, knew that Leg thought John had brought dishonor to the tribe in some indefinable way. But he didn’t know why it should make Leg hate him so. There was more going on here.

Then, too, it pissed John off that Leg felt that John was an outsider, given Leg’s own origins.

“I’m not the only outsider among the People,” John said pointedly. “And I didn’t ask to come here, remember. Like you, I wasn’t given a choice.”

“You also haven’t tried very hard to leave lately, I notice.” There was an ugliness in Leg’s voice that brought John upright, drove steel into his spine and his voice, both.

“If you have something to say about my relationship with Falling Stone, just say it.”

“It’s unnatural,” Leg said. “And wrong.”

John’s voice was tight and low, his neck a long line of tension when he said, “Because we’re both men, you mean.” 

Leg gave a mirthless laugh. “No.” He stalked away from John in the direction of the food distribution, indicated by a steady babble of noise.

John caught him, stopped him with a firm grip on his arm. “Then what? Why is it that you hate me so much for what I have with Stone?”

“Because I don’t have it!” Leg barked suddenly, his eyes lit with strange fire.

John let him go, stepped back again, out of the range of that hostile look. “You…you want Falling Stone?” And now he was confused. Deeply confused. He’d thought…

“You’re dumber than I thought,” Leg said, but his tone belied his words, for his voice was softer now. 

“Leg…” John began, struggling to understand.

“She and I can never marry, no matter that we love each other and have for a long time. No one will ever acknowledge us, not publicly. I am not of the tribe. I was never adopted…no one wanted me, at first, and then, by the time I made myself useful, they’d grown used to me being an outsider. That’s why I have never had a seat on the council, though I am older than the Chief himself. But you come along and flout every rule, show disrespect for our customs… _their_ customs…and still you have Stone. Still you are the hero. Still, despite being an exile, you are accepted and given the respect that I never have been offered.”

By the end of his speech, the longest one John had ever heard Leg give outside of the storytelling circle or his official duties as translator for John, Leg had wound down to nothing, voice a thin wisp of sound, almost lost in the ambient noises of night and the distance percussion of raucous celebration. 

Leg wouldn’t look at John. He stood there slump-shouldered, staring at the cooking pot in his hand as though he couldn’t remember what it was used for.

John said, “Maybe you cannot marry Woman, but you can be with her for the rest of your lives. I can’t be with Stone forever, Leg. I have to leave. That was the bargain I made with La-na-ta-na for the location of the food. See, you might be an outsider, but you did not bring the People death and discord. I did, and she wants me gone. So, I’m going.”

John tried to keep his voice indifferent, but at the end, there was the slightest roughness that betrayed him.

Leg was looking at him now, John noted with some bitterness.

“I’m sorry,” Leg said, finally. “My jealousy is petty in the face of The People’s suffering.” He glanced at the cooking pot. “I’ll go get some roots and herbs for soup,” he added, moving once again toward the source of the village’s celebration.

John let him go, saying only, “Take care of her, Leg,” as he turned toward his lonely hut. 

He was afraid to go to sleep that night for fear that he’d wake up on the Daedalus, and sleep only claimed him as the frigid air in the hut was washed with the pale grey light of dawn.

The cold days passed for John in a state of numb tension. Always he expected to hear Ronon’s voice rising over the sounds of his boys as they ran. Ever he looked for the bright shimmer of a transporter beam or the telltale glint of winter sunlight off a jumper window.

He knew it was stupid to look and listen for such things. When _they_ came, it would be unexpected; how could it be otherwise? Despite knowing that La-na-ta-na was sincere in her desire to rid the world of John’s presence, there was a part of him that refused to believe he’d ever have to leave. Certainly, he couldn’t go before Stone returned. And so he pretended that he had a choice.

As days wore on into weeks and no sign came of Stone and his raiding party, worry began to eke away at John’s reserve of calm. He had been leaving little presents at the door to Stone’s lodge: rough carvings of earth animals for Winter Sun and Calls-at-Dark; vine wreaths for Little Bird; an armful of wood for the practical Tall Woman. Now and then, one of them would catch him at his secret chore, but none would ever acknowledge him aloud, letting only a little smile catch at the corners of their mouths.

These glimpses are what told him he had to worry, for even Tall Woman had begun to look worn, and that could only mean that there was reason for alarm.

They’d been gone three weeks and two days when John heard the hue and cry from the eastern edge of the village. He rose from his place on the bench outside his hut and ran toward the center of the village, easily outstripping even the quickest of the boys. He didn’t know what he would find once he got there: Stone or Ronon, a raiding party or a recovery team. 

He definitely knew which he preferred.

So it was with mingled relief and frustration that he found a group of women and boys gathered around a downed a-u-mak, bloody foam bubbling at the corners of its gasping mouth.

“It’s sick,” one old woman said, and there were murmurs of agreement from the crowd.

“Leave it alone,” cautioned another woman, who pulled her son away from the beast even as he burst through the crowd to see it.

The creature was groaning and rolling its eyes wildly, and John felt sorry for it suddenly, despite his own experiences. Carefully, he drew his knife and approached the obviously ailing creature.

“Be careful,” someone cautioned. “You could catch the sickness.” 

John knew that, but he didn’t intend to get too close. He borrowed a bow and arrows from one of the men who’d come up to the crowd to see what was happening and approached the animal cautiously.

The creature made a mewling sound and struggled as John neared, terrified and trying to escape, but it was too weak to stand, and the best it could do was raise its great head.

John looked it in the eye and waited until its head was against the earth once again. Then he loosed an arrow into the place just behind its leg, where the heart was vulnerable to piercing. He let a second go into the creature’s throat, but it was already dead by then.

He was intent upon the task of securing a rope to the creature’s forelegs so that they could pull it away from the village to prevent contagion, and so he did not see what brought a sudden silence to the gathered crowd of villagers, all anxious for entertainment of any kind after so many weeks of deep snow and relative quiet.

When he became aware of the hiatus, John raised his head and looked behind him. What he saw staggered him, unexpected as it was.

Falling Stone, stumbling under the weight of another man, whom he’d slung over his shoulders in what, on earth anyway, was called a fireman’s carry.

John dropped the rope, got several steps forward when he realized how it looked and stopped, uncertain of what he should do.

Stone had seen him, let his eyes rest on John’s and then glance away, to those who rushed forward to relieve him of the limp man.

Stragglers stumbled in behind Stone, every member of the party, all of them carrying heavy packs weighted down with stolen stores.

Tall Woman ran forward out of the loud press of people to approach Stone and offer him a smile. Her hand on his arm made John’s jaw tight, but he knew better, knew that it was alright. Stone was alive, and now John could leave.

As if expecting to see Teyla standing to one side, John scanned the area in a wide sweep, turning all the way around.

Satisfied that this night, at least, might be his, John returned to his work, making fast the dead bear’s legs to drag it off into the woods.

When Stone came to John that night, there was in every movement a kind of reverence, burdened with the weight of John’s secret knowledge that when Stone laid his hand on the flat of John’s belly, it might be the last time John ever felt that searing heat that pinned him and opened him wide for wanting. That John might never taste Stone’s pebbled nipple hard against his tongue or lave his way down Stone’s tight navel to the arrow of pleasure below it.

That he might never sink to Stone’s root and ride him until red blurred his vision and he cried out in complete submission to something he knew now he’d never controlled.

Stone sensed something in John but did not ask. There were shadows in Stone’s eyes since his return that even John’s choked pleas against his lover’s sweating flesh could not drive away. John didn’t ask, either.

They spoke in gestures, and when Stone finally gave himself over to the powerful pleasure, syllables spilled from his lips that sounded like curses but were said like prayer. 

They awoke in a tangled pile of sticky limbs, Stone’s long hair pinned beneath John’s arm, against which Stone lay, eyes open on John’s beard-rough profile. 

“You have to go,” John said, and Stone nodded. He’d learned that phrase the first night he’d stayed.

They shared a rare morning kiss, the golden light of early morn filtering through the chimney hole, painting broad strokes of warm bronze across Stone’s face as he leaned over John and kissed him long and deeply, his tongue a slick, sweet reminder of the night’s loving.

John’s chest ached with the need to say goodbye, to cry, to do something unmanly and unmilitary and utterly stupid. He couldn’t rescind his deal with La-na-ta-na now if he wanted to. They had the food. More than enough, with Stone’s return.

He shoved the thoughts out of his head as Stone slid off the pallet and into his leggings, one long leg after the other, the leather skimming over his thighs, snug against his manhood that was half-full with their kissing. Long fingers that had been inside him laced the leggings tight to his taut belly, and John sighed to himself and tried to breathe through the terrible pressure in his chest.

When Stone left, John could not bring himself to give the morning greeting, which translated to something like, “Go well until we see each other again.” He feared it would be a lie, and he could not imagine Stone’s face if it were so.

Chapter Twenty-One

But the bitch did not come for him that morning, nor did anyone else, and the days wore on through the winter, the cold coming hard, and contagion in its wake, a wet lung noise filling the lodges of The People. John stayed healthy—military vaccinations having proved useful in this instance, apparently—and helped Deer Woman Running, who had never recovered her full strength after the illness she’d only barely survived.

He stood beside the beds of some who would not wake again, listened to the stiff rattle of their breath through sunken chests, wiped sweat from their brows and out of unseeing eyes, wide with fever, and wished he could find the Ascended one who claimed to care for these people, show her what she was selling instead of mercy.

But finally, the first green shoots of spring grew fast in the sunny stretches of the stream banks, and John saw hope there. Tiny white flowers blossomed in the bosom of late winter snow, and he saw Calls-at-Dark, paler for her long confinement but once again strong, picking the little flowers and stringing them into a garland for her head. She gave him a shy smile and a wave as she raced by, pursued by three other children, all death-brushed shadows of their former joy, but smiling still, despite the loss that had touched every one of their lodges.

He himself had finally succumbed to illness, taking to his lonely bed by day, tended the long, dark nights by Stone, who stayed by him except when sickness stalked his own family. They grew familiar with each other in the way that longtime lovers do, and soon enough their nights were spent in warm sleep, the passion ebbing to a banked fire that burst over them once in awhile and left them breathless and sweating, grinning like madmen against each other’s hot skin.

It was on the morning that followed just such a night that John knew. He was sitting on his bench in front of his hut, working on a new hide for his door, watching as two of the boys—Leaping Snake and Works-in-the-Sunshine—practiced katas that John had learned from Teyla. He was calling out to them, correcting their stance without rising from his seat, when they fell still of a sudden and stared off to the southeast, toward the trail that led to the Ring.

John followed their gaze and felt a numbness creep over him as darkness caught at the edges of his vision and he struggled to stand, hands suddenly stiff on the hide, unable even to tuck the needle safely away. 

Ronon was striding toward him, on his face a wide smile, teeth flashing white in the warm spring light, Teyla close behind, also laughing, though giving her attention equally to the two boys, who were still stunned into standing like stones. Behind them came three Marines, eyes on the boys and hands on their guns.

“It’s alright,” he called to the boys in their own language. “Bring Stone,” he said, though it was more proper to call the Chief instead for such a meeting as this would likely be. 

To Ronon he said, “Let them go,” even as the boys spun and raced toward the village itself.

“John,” Teyla said as she approached him, holding out her arms for the traditional Athosian blessing, to which he submitted stiffly. When she stepped away, Teyla’s eyes were troubled, but she kept her own counsel, for which John was strangely grateful.

Ronon was next, offering his arm, which John grasped at the elbow, only to be pulled into a half-hug, Ronon’s huge hand pounding his back once, twice, and then Stone was beside John and Ronon released him.

Stone’s face was impressively blank, John thought, and he’d come to read every nuance of the stoic warrior’s least expression.

The marines, none of whom John knew— _and that couldn’t be a good sign of how things were faring on Atlantis_ , John thought—spread out in the standard coverage formation and waited, feet at shoulder width, guns cradled across their arms, expressions neutral, eyes watchful.

Stone scanned them cursorily, dismissed their deadly weapons with a curt nod, and said to John, in the language of the People, “They have come for you?”

John just nodded, throat too full for speech. He cleared his throat and managed, “Yes.”

Stone had heard of John’s promise to La-na-ta-na only after it became obvious that the fate in question wasn’t to befall John immediately, so he knew doom when it came calling.

“Invite them to the council lodge,” Stone instructed, touching John lightly at the elbow as he turned away. That was all Stone would show of his emotions, John knew, but it was enough. The other man virtually never touched John in public unless they were sparring.

“He wants you to follow him to the council lodge, where the Chief waits. It’s okay,” John added for the benefit of the beweaponed marines. “They aren’t going to hurt you. Stone knows why you’ve come.”

Teyla hadn’t missed the touch Stone had given him, and her eyes widened a little, but she said nothing, simply smiling at John as she passed him, following Stone’s broad back toward the council lodge. 

“Good to see you, Sheppard,” Ronon reiterated, slapping him once more on the back as he passed. John gestured the marines ahead of him, wanting to keep an eye on them despite their obvious professionalism. 

Teyla and Ronon followed Stone into the lodge slowly, and John could see by the cant of Ronon’s shoulders that the big man was feeling cautious. No doubt Teyla was scanning the interior with keen eyes, as well. The marines spread out to either side of the door and stood there, looking everywhere and nowhere. 

John stopped at the door flap. Since his exile, he wasn’t allowed inside by tribal law. Leg appeared from inside the lodge and beckoned impatiently to John.

“Come in!” he barked gruffly. “This is about you, after all.”

John did as he was told, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness of the interior long enough to find Ronon and Teyla standing to his left, facing the council bench. Stone was on the right, alone except for Leg, who sat on a bench nearby. 

John was left standing in the middle.

The chief looked over Ronon and Teyla, nodding once with what John suspected was approval. Certainly, the two of them looked like they’d be far better fits for The People than John himself had been, even if his former teammates were wearing standard issue gear. Then, the chief began to speak.

Leg translated sporadically, and more for the benefit of Ronon and Teyla than for John, who’d become fairly proficient in their language in the months that he’d lived among The People.

“The chief welcomes the outsiders to the council lodge and asks them to sit among us as honored guests.”

John was surprised, until he heard the chief’s next words.

“Since John is an exile and no longer a member of any clan within the tribe, he is free to choose his own path. He may leave with his friends from beyond the Ring of the Ancestors, and he will go with the blessings of this council, who are willing to recognize him for his many contributions to our village, despite his regular defiance of The People’s laws.”

John thought that Leg was taking some liberty with the chief’s words, especially since he hadn’t heard anything like “defiance” from the chief. Still, he understood the old man’s point of view, especially considering Leg’s own position in the tribe.

“Or,” Leg had continued, “He may stay here among The People and continue contributing as he has been. The boys of the village, especially, are grateful for the training.”

There was silence for several minutes, during which he saw Ronon shifting uncomfortably on his wooden seat. John imagined that for Ronon, such inactivity was nerve-wracking, particularly since the Satedan didn’t understand its purpose.

Then Stone spoke, and Leg translated this—with more care, John noticed.

“John Sheppard has been a friend to the Clan of the Great Bird and to The People of the Lake and the Plains. He has been a greater friend to me.”

John saw Teyla lean forward a little in her seat, her eyes bright on Stone’s face, which showed nothing except what subtle shifts his feelings could not hide.

“But he does not belong among the People. He comes from the city of the Ancestors, where he and his people fight the same enemy from which we fled long ago. He must return and continue that fight, for without him, his people are weak.”

John knew that this was not strictly true, that Stone was justifying for himself as well as for the chief the inevitable choice that John would make. A choice he’d made months before and from which he could not flee.

Stone’s pronouncement had elicited murmurs and questions from the council of elders, who were only now learning that their legends had basis in fact and that the people from beyond the Ring were heroes out of stories that might long be told to their children’s children.

Stone let the murmuring die down and then went on, his voice strong, expression careful.

“Sheppard will return with his people to the city of the Ancestors, with the understanding that he may come back to us on the Day of Opening and bring word of the fight. We will greet him on that day with great rejoicing, and he will be welcome here among the People.”

Though he was not of the council himself, Stone gave his statements the weight of command, and none of the elders, not even the chief, seemed willing to contradict him. Instead, they nodded, one by one, and the chief said, “A-ho.”

And just like that, John was free to go. 

Stone approached him, stopping only inches away, looking down into his eyes with a solemnity that made John want to shout, “It isn’t fair!”

Nothing was, he guessed.

Ronon and Teyla came next, smiles tempered now with understanding of a kind that John could not swallow. He turned away from their knowing faces and followed Stone from the council lodge. 

They made a slow and strange procession, straggling in ones and twos toward John’s hut at the edge of the village, marines coming up the rear with their hands on their guns. Only Stone and John went inside the hut, the others choosing to spend the sunny time in talk with Leg, who was giving them a general— _very_ general—history of The People. 

He had little to take with him, and he’d stowed most of it in his pack when Stone pressed into his hands the finely carved box in which John had kept his clothes. 

“Take this,” Stone said, his accented English aching in John’s ears. “It is yours.”

John shook his head. “Someone else might need it and the clothes inside.”

Stone said, “No.” And John suddenly understood that Stone would not want to see another wearing the leggings that he’d so lovingly stripped off of John all those months ago, or the shirt that had once been Stone’s own and that swam on John, but which Stone loved for its looseness, for the way he could skim it over John’s sensitive skin, making the man gasp.

John shook his head free, tried to drive the tears that threatened to choke him out of his throat with a harsh laugh that was out of place and hollow.

Stone laid a hand on John’s cheek, forcing John to raise his face.

“I love you,” Stone said in English, and then he repeated it in the language of the People and followed it with a simple kiss, hot but almost chaste. When he stepped back, his breath shuddered out of him audibly.

John thought that his heart might stop beating. Nothing could hurt this much and still be survived.

“I love you,” John echoed in Stone’s language and then his own. From his pocket he took his compass, which had never worked on this planet of polar oddities. This he gave to Stone with a smile. “It doesn’t work.”

“Yes, it does,” Stone answered, closing his hand over it.

John nodded, knowing what his lover meant.

“I should go.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll come back in…what is it, six months?” 

“Seven,” Stone answered, brow furrowing.

“’sokay,” John said. “Rodney’ll know when the Ring is ready.”

The trouble cleared from Stone’s face, for he’d heard much of the physicist and knew that John trusted him.

“And hey, I’ll bring some of that popcorn I was telling you about.” John tried another laugh, but it came out like a sigh.

“Go,” Stone said, voice suddenly harsh in the stillness of the hut.

John turned toward the door, wondering if Stone would follow him out, wishing he wouldn’t, wanting him to say, “Stop! Stay! I’ll go with you.”

Anything. Nothing.

John got as far as the door flap when he felt the hand on the back of his neck, followed soon after by the press of Stone’s long, lean body hot against his back.

An arm wrapped around him from behind, and John felt his lover’s shudders through his own frame. 

“Go well until we see each other again,” he said, and John felt every syllable in his very skin.

He repeated the words in Stone’s tongue and then stepped through the door flap, feeling Stone’s arms fall away as he walked out into a world that was no longer his.

Leg led them as far as the verge of the woods and surprised John by handing him a wooden figure he’d once seen in the Healing Hut. It was an a-u-mak on its hind legs, and something about its face was humorous. Woman had said it was for the children who came in fear to the Hut with some illness or injury. Leg would sometimes make it dance and sing in a silly voice, Woman had told John once in a fit of confidence. 

John smiled at the figure and tucked it into his pack, thanking Leg.

Then the old man pulled John into a strong hug that lasted only long enough for John to hear the words, “Take care and come back” whispered roughly in his ear.

Leg released him and turned away in a single, halting motion.

John dragged his eyes away from Leg’s retreating form and turned toward the path into the woods that would lead him back to Atlantis.

He did not look back as they crested the hill that hid the village from sight, but he felt every step he took away from the People, from the place that had become his home, from the man who had made it so, and when he stepped through the stargate and emerged in Atlantis, he turned back to watch the gate glimmer out of life.

Then he faced the people who’d once been his family and forced a smile onto his too-tight features. 

“Hey,” he said to Elizabeth, who raced forward to embrace him fiercely, her typical diplomatic demeanor gone in the rush of emotions chasing across her face.

Behind her, a gauntlet of greetings awaited him, and John steeled himself to accept alien hands on his own, strange words on his tongue.

He sighed and started singing in his head the song of leavetaking he’d learned from Stone. 

_I will go among the people who do not know me._

_I will sleep in strange lodges and cook on foreign fires._

_I will walk among hills that have no mark of my people._

_I will hunt in strange lands and the birds will not call to me._

_But I will be of The People. I am of The People. I will be of The People always._

Fin.


End file.
